Glass Houses
by Cyprith
Summary: When Belle left the Dark Castle, her path crossed that of a strange, hatted man. Now, they're freshly escaped from an asylum and into a whole new Wonderland.
1. Dirty, Young and Brilliant Clowns

Written for the Special Attack Prompt: Start Wearing Purple by Gogol Bordello

This chapter wedges itself in an awkward place timeline wise. It's technically set in Skin Deep—after Belle leaves, but before the Queen comes to see Rumpel. I'm going to venture out on my limb here and say a good many months pass between the two occasions.

* * *

><p><strong>Dirty, Young and Brilliant Clowns<strong>

* * *

><p>Bravery is a vastly overrated concept.<p>

Bravery took Belle to the side of the road and no further as a vast black carriage thundered up from nowhere behind her. Bravery stole a kiss from the beast. And Belle rather suspects that bravery is what spread her name from here to Highwater, coupled close beside _the monster's whore. _

Bravery gets people killed. But Belle is determined to see the world.

She keeps her head low as she moves through this newest bravery—a shepherds' village, thick with moving wooly boulders and the cloying stench of sheep through every house and thatch.

Three cities back, the whisper of a wakened mob taught her not to pay for supper with measured strings of gold, to look no man in the eyes, and speak to women only in voices loud enough to be overheard. So today, Belle walks with purpose, eyes the ground and the flash of her scuffed shoes. She has little enough coin to her name—proper coin, anyway. Today will be the first of many days she goes hungry.

Two towns ago, she learned to spatter her cloak with mud and fray the hems with sharpened stones. Travelers with nice things must wear their nice things worn. So today, Belle is barely noticed. Any shine from silver threads embroidered through her cloak have long since tarnished in the rain. The delicate tips of leaves have been plucked ragged by broken fingernails. And though she finds quite the crowd amassed and buzzing in this shepherds' village, but the crowd does not find her.

Belle flinches away to the edges of the street. She has found strangers are expected to in places such as these. As she nears the biggest building this ditch-water little place can boast, the crowd grows thicker, and the sound of raging drunks strikes her in the breastbone as terrifying and utterly familiar.

"You might just as well say I go marauding through the countryside snapping up dragons for my supper!" a young man's voice protests over the swell and buzz of the crowd. "It's utterly ridiculous, is what it is. I'm on my way _out_, thank you very much."

Threats follow from the crowd. Someone calls for a witch-tester, another for weaponry. Belle has learned, from several similar places, that most of the assembled here will not act.

But one will—one always will—and he is the spark that will set the powder keg alight.

"No, sir, I do _not_," Belle hears the young man bawling protests again and thinks he has a hawker's voice. "If you _must _know, I was born in a well under very auspicious and _up_lifting circumstances, and furthermore, I subsist entirely on treacle. I wouldn't touch your finest cuts, let alone your infant, thank you very much. Now, do be a lamb and let me _pass_."

The crowd rears back the moment the young man shoves forward off the stoop of the inn and Belle catches sight of him. He cannot be much older than her, though he is dressed entirely in several different shades of purple, right up to his enormous top hat. A showman's suit, she thinks. A magician, or a trickster. Belle can tell by the cant of his hands and fingers as he wades between the assembled people that pockets are not safe from him.

But coming off the stoop was a disastrous idea. He has lost his only means of escape; the crowd circles around to close behind him. And finally, the one—the one that always will—opens his idiot mouth.

"He's one of them imps, I'll bet!"

And several others draw their knives.

He is probably not a very nice young man, Belle thinks. And bravery is a vastly overrated concept.

But still, she cannot help but to be brave.

"Look here!" she shouts. "You leave that man alone!"

"Stay out of this, stranger!" someone barks. Then another, as the powder-keg of frightened idiots ignites, "I bet she's with him! His familiar!"

"Oh, that's just ridiculous. I'm a person, I can't be _anyone's _familiar." Belle glowers at the crowd, her hands on her hips, though her heart thunders in her throat. She stares them down, and more and more, their attention turns to her. "Would you listen to yourselves? You're the ones with threats and knives, not I. Pray tell, how am _I_ the monster?"

The purple-hatted man ducks his head. The hat comes off and so she loses sight of him, but she thinks she sees him slip out from under the backs and elbows of the crowd.

"She could be a witch!" someone snarls.

Belle finds the speaker. The accusation comes from a small enough man—the sort that, on his own, would never lift his eyes from his own shoes—and if Belle has learned anything from her days with Rumpelstiltskin, she's learned bluff and showmanship. She borrows a little something now from him, and a little something more from the stern-faced crow who schooled her in her younger days.

"I _came _to bless your fallow fields. Gift your sheep with healthy twins. Perhaps witness the birth of a hero and give her a gift to help her on her way. But _you—_" Belle folds the last two fingers of her right hand and points at her accuser, gathering what slender silvered lines of magic from the air she knows that she can hold. "_You_ have hindered my apprentice and insulted my name—and for that, you will pay."

Catching the tail end of the purple-hatted man quite clearly dart into a muck-puddled alleyway some distance away, Belle steels her shoulders, levels her hand…

And lets the magic go.

Light and color and dazzling heat explode in the thick of the crowd, her spell somewhere off its mark. Several faces turn a variety of colors—puce and taupe and sea-foam green. One burly man turns a remarkable sky blue.

And this, she thinks, is why bravery is overrated.

She'd only been expecting smoke.

Still, Belle keeps her shoulders tight and firmly back, stands her ground on the opposite side of the street and crosses her arms like iron before her chest. "There."

"There?" someone wails. "What did you _do_?"

"Isn't it obvious? I changed the color of your face."

"We've been _cursed_!"

"Yes," she nods. "A lovely green. And several delightful shades of blue. Perhaps next time, you'll be more favorable towards oddly colored strangers. Be thankful I did you no worse."

And steeling herself to run at the first noise of dissent behind her, Belle turns and continues on her way.

The crowd doesn't move. Perhaps they are afraid of her. Perhaps she's cursed them somehow, and they cannot.

Belle does not turn around. She does not stop to look. Perhaps if she had, she might have seen a slender man in dragon leather watching her go with a wicked appraiser's grin. But Belle does not. She barely breathes. She counts her steps to keep her calm, does not hurry—dear gods, she cannot appear to hurry—and disappears into the trees.

And no one follows.

Not one.

Well, _technically. _

Because as she staggers behind a briar bush and drops shaking to the ground with her head between her knees to breathe, she finds herself sitting suddenly beside her purple-hatted man. He has a friendly face she finds she trusts and gray eyes that smile, even though his hand shakes as he offers her his flask.

"Have some wine," he says, pressing it into her hands.

Belle steadies her breathing, peers inside the tiny metal can. "There isn't any."

"Ah well," he sighs and shrugs. Perhaps it is the bravery, but Belle finds she must stifle a giggle into her sleeve. The man smiles at her, and his wide, doggish face is both mischievous and kind. "What's your name?"

That sobers her. She peers through the briars and the brush, remembers to strain her ears for the sound of approaching feet.

"I don't think I should say," she ventures at last.

Her new friend nods, scrunches up his nose and lifts a shoulder. "Me either."

And because bravery is a vastly overrated, when shortly thereafter they rise and walk and walk and hours of conversation later find themselves at a fork in the road, Belle nods a fond goodbye to her be-hatted friend and chooses the opposite path.

It is, apparently, the short road to the same village.

Belle arrives first. She scrubs clothing for her supper—life is not so very different outside the Dark Castle after all. And how strange it is, she thinks with her head over yet another steaming tub, that of all things, this should be the skill for survival that Rumpelstiltskin teaches her.

In any case, the people in the village do not ask questions, and the scarred, cheerful old woman that hires her is kind. Belle spends a long night stirring various cauldrons of muddied clothing, the feeling of amused and lingering eyes forever burning the back of her neck. But no one asks her name and Belle pretends she is unable to speak, so she goes to bed happy, unmolested, a full stomach and happily warm.

It all goes to hell the next morning, of course.

As she beats the dust from a rug outside the inn, a wee little girl comes toddling to her with a badly scraped knee. The child sobs into her arms and Belle doesn't think. She _should _think. But she touches her fingers to her lips instead, then to the place above the baby's hurt, and the sore spot disappears.

Apparently, this village has had recent trouble with a changeling. The people here bear no tolerance for even small, tame magics now, and Belle does not realize soon enough. Before she understands what is going on, she's penned in by yet _another_ bloody crowd calling her a monster's whore.

Belle watches them circle, her back to the trees and her meager bag of belongings still waiting at the foot of a bed inside. She considers calling Rumpelstiltskin. She has felt eyes on her shoulders often enough to believe that he would hear her. But while bravery is overrated, like it or not, bravery is Belle's nature. She steels jaw and lifts her head, means to confront them with the insanity of their own accusations, but when she opens her mouth to speak, she is interrupted.

"Mary Ann? _Mary Ann, _are you putting on a show for these good people without me?"

A violently purple top-hat bobs over the head of the crowd, parting people like an unhappy sea.

"Now you know that goes against our contract, Mary Ann, and I absolutely will not have my apprentice upstaging me!"

And suddenly, her hatted friend is at the forefront of the crowd. He wears a pair of round, wire-rimmed spectacles today. Fire dances along the seams of his sleeves. He seems not to notice either, mopping at his brow with great, ridiculous flaps of a frilly pink handkerchief. Belle's heart flutters in her throat like bird's wings, but she has sold herself to an imp of a man over her father's own war-table. She can certainly handle this.

Belle smiles. She has had a lifetime of smiling in rooms full of people she hates, and rolling with the punches is new, but she has walked on her own feet through seven sullen and unfriendly towns. She has learned to make do.

She says, "Well, sir, I couldn't wait for you all day. When I left, you still hadn't even picked your name!"

Her hatted friend snaps his handkerchief at her. It turns into a red-breasted hummingbird and darts away.

"Crumbs in the works, m'dear. Nothing a little butter didn't fix."

"Oh?" she puts a hand on her hip, taps a muddied silver foot. "Well, have you at least picked a name?"

"Today," he says, and bows with a flourish, "You may call me Hatter."

The uneasy crowd begins to settle. She hears them whispering, "_Performers?" _Magic, it seems, is acceptable, as long as it's accompanied by a hawker's barking tones. Belle's smile grows a little less taut. She eases, somewhat.

"I may," she agrees. "But would you like me to?"

And though Hatter's silver eyes show worry, he grins, and it suits him. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" he demands, and tosses her a spool of golden thread, lifted from her own pocket the day before.

Belle catches it, arches him a brow.

"Because their notes are both very flat, I should think," she says, and tosses it back. It changes, midair, into a searing red apple.

And they perform.

Bravery is overrated, but Belle plays at bravery well. Her heart flutters and jumps in her throat with every murmur of the crowd, but she smiles and smiles until she thinks her face might break—until the smile seeps down and somehow, bizarrely, she begins to enjoy it.

She uses the flashiest spells she knows, which aren't many. Cleaning the Dark Castle wasn't precisely an apprenticeship, and the Dark One's many books weren't written with princesses in mind. But the crowd doesn't know magic, and while she doesn't know much, anything with a bit of smoke or sparkle suits to amuse.

Hatter juggles a house of cards he builds in midair. Belle accompanies each new addition with a flash of smoke and a jangle of bells.

When the house of cards tumbles, she lights them aflame. They burn into green glittered ash long before they hit the ground.

She sends up a column of raging aubergine clouds. Hatter pulls a rabbit from his hat.

It's the same spell, more or less, again and again. Only the color changes. But if there's one thing Belle has mastered working for the dreaded Rumpelstiltskin, it's turning pink underthings back to white again. The crowd doesn't notice. Children trickle from between house and out of fields to watch them, and soon they are surrounded by a sea of tiny, eager eyes.

Belle grins at Hatter—_we're safe as houses now_.

He twists his fingers—_takes_ _two for luck_—and grins right back.

When a dormouse pushes open the uppermost part of Hatter's overlarge top hat, even Belle cannot help but clap. Her eyes are on Hatter, and his on hers. Neither spots the middling sort of man in dragon leather, standing beneath the dusty shade of a blooming cherry tree.

The poor dormouse blinks blearily out into the crowd, hiccups, and begins to sing.

"_Twinkle, twinkle, little bat. How I wonder what you're at." _

The thing floats higher with every rising note, soaring up and up as gently as a wisp of steam. Belle finds Hatter's eyes. He glances up once, cocks an eyebrow—a challenge.

"_Up above the world so high. Like a tea tray in the sky_—"

Without stopping to think or try to reason, Belle concentrates and flicks her fingers at the dormouse. Hatter catches the silver platter the creature becomes as it drops from the air, produces it to the crowd with a flourish and a bow.

Belle laughs. "I'm getting better, Hatter," she says.

She does not see the eyes of the impish man beneath the tree fix on her, deep lines bracketing his brow and mouth.

Hatter shrugs, hides a smile. "I've taught you well."

He drops the tea tray in midair. Belle seizes it with a tendril of borrowed sky, forces it to hang there. She catches Hatter's eyes flicker once in surprise, but the crowd does not. They see only the teakettle he produces from the depths of one sleeve.

Belle grins. Crouching, she plucks a dandelion from the sparse scattering of grass beneath her feet, offers it to Hatter, then shakes her head. "Oh no, no. That's not right, is it?"

She gives her hand a little shake—half for showmanship, half to hide her tremors—and produces a tiny chipped teacup, barely large enough to fill her palm.

And her eyes are on Hatter, so she does not see the impish man beneath the blooming cherry tree dig a fist into his stomach as though he hurts there, as though he has been struck, or feels he might unexpectedly pull apart at the seams.

Hatter eyes her cup and snorts. "Ostentatious, don't you think? So _large. _Ah well, if there's no room, move down. That's what my mother always said."

Shrugging, he sets his kettle down on the floating tea tray, pulls off his hat. Reaching inside, he removes another teacup big enough to call itself a butter dish.

"Here you are, m'dear. Clean cup and all that."

"Why thank you, sir." She takes the massive cup and waits politely as he fills it up with tea, then dribbles a few last drops his tiny chipped cup, and kisses the corner of his glass to hers.

"To good health," she says. Hatter hums his agreement and takes a dainty sip.

A moment later, he glares at the crowd over his silly, round glasses and the ridiculously tiny rim.

"Well?" he snaps. "Show's over. Go on!" And flaps a hand.

Belle swallows, so grateful for the weight of this massive, ridiculous vessel to steady her shaking hands. She must ignore the crowd; it is vital they maintain the act and haughty expectation. So she takes a sip from her tea to hide her face and misses entirely the man beneath the blooming cherry tree, as his color changes with his mood—from sunny gold to bitter, tarnished copper.

And beyond her cup, the crowd actually begins to disperse.

Hatter murmurs, "Oh, I nearly forgot. Sugar?" and pulls several slightly linty cubes from behind her ear. He offers her a smile, something sheepish and scared and brave and relieved.

"No, thank you," she says, feeling very much the same. "There's already honey in the tea."

"Ah, yes. Well. Always good to come prepared."

They ignore the world together, speak of the weather instead, and a horse in the next town that threw a shoe. Belle mentions the dormouse's wife, "Won't she be pleased with all this nice fine silver?"

"Oh, yes," Hatter says. "To hear her tell it, he always was a penniless lay-about. This should do her some good, hmm?"

And they keep on, battering at this and that, at shoes and ships and sealing wax. And Belle does not see the man beneath the tree memorizing the light in her eyes, the bow of her smile and the breadth of her hands. She does not see his shoulders sag and turn away. She does not see the accusation in his eyes, directed inward. She does not see his shattered hope or his despair.

She sees Hatter. Only Hatter. And they talk of many things, until the crowd tires of their ridiculous new mundanity and fragments back to daily tasks again.

At last, Belle feels able to say, "Thank you."

And Hatter grins. It lights up his whole face until his gray eyes sparkle like the rarest gems. He reminds her of a childhood playmate—Andy Lee—all hope and mischief and quick, dirty hands.

"Whatever for, my Mary Ann?"

And Belle sees in his eyes that her hatted friend is not an especially trustworthy man. She sees that he is running from something, just as she is. She sees a tendril of the future, drifting down from the vast sunlit sky and Belle knows that their friendship will be long and fast and dark, joyous and hurtful and utterly _exceptional_. She sees that when the end of the world comes, they will meet it holding hands and emerge alive, together, on the other side.

But it is, perhaps, more important what she does not see.

One lonely impish man standing, shoulders bent, beneath a dying cherry tree.


	2. Hats and Hearts

Oldandnewfirm prompted: Pocket full of stones

* * *

><p><strong>Hats and Hearts and Pockets Full of Stone<strong>

* * *

><p>She is so tired. Her legs weigh a thousand pounds. Belle feels she must be filled with stone.<p>

"We can't stop here," Hatter hisses, when she leans against a tree. "Clean cup, darling, clean cup. Gotta move down."

He grabs her hand and pulls her on. Belle grits her teeth, she staggers forward. Though her head swims, she follows him along.

"There's a lamb," he soothes. "Mint and mutton. Not much farther now."

He's been saying this for hours, but she knows he must be right. Hatter knows his guards and cards. She follows. She runs. Together, their heaving breaths paint an asthmatic orchestra in the crackling underbrush of the woods. They are too tired, too desperate to move with silence, and they have been locked up for far too long to run.

She hopes the mayor will not call out her dogs. Their huffing and puffing will blow the whole house of cards.

Abruptly, the woods come to an end and Hatter stumbles, catches his foot in a root and falls. Belle drops with him, trying to catch him, but too weak to hold him up.

"Alas and alack," he mutters, looking out into the sudden, open world. "Wrong turn."

"How's your ankle?" Belle whispers. "Did you twist it?"

"Don't think so. It's these damn shoes."

Belle nods. Her feet are sore, too. The smallest shoes they stole from the lockers in the hospital above were still too big for them.

But as Hatter untangles himself from the undergrowth, more slowly than he should (no doubt an opportunity to catch his breath), Belle sees the house they have nearly stumbled up to. Her heart aches. She knows this place. It doubles in her head, her memory—a castle, a manor, and back again. It makes her head hurt, but she knows that's the medicine as much as the curse.

"What?" Hatter asks. He understands. "Where are we?"

She nods.

"It's his," she says quietly.

They know each other's loves and loss, but they do not speak of names. Some secrets are worn too close to the breast. And usually, they are careful of each other's scars, but this time, Hatter purses his lips.

"You think your prince is in there, sweet cheeks? He's not. Oh hell, maybe he is. But if there's _a_ prince in there, he's not yours. He didn't rescue you."

"Shut up," she snaps.

"Come on. We've stopped too long. We've gotta run."

He pulls on her arm, tries to tug her to her feet. But Belle is tired, so tired, and she cannot tear her eyes from those towers. "I want to see him."

"See who?" he asks. "The man who abandoned you?"

And she wants to say no. She wants to say _Rumpelstiltskin_ and let him quake under the force of that name. But she knows she can't tell him. She knows the truth carries too much power. And she knows this man with his strange fetish for hats well enough not to trust him with certain painful things.

"You gotta know you can't just walk in there," Hatter whispers and his voice isn't cruel, it's urgent—it's _true._ "He doesn't _want _you. He'll have you shipped off back to the dungeons before you can _blink_."

Belle swallows. She closes her eyes and turns her face. Hatter is right. Hatter is right, and she knows it. Rumpelstiltskin is the strongest sorcerer in the whole world. No one could stand against his wrath. He destroyed a kingdom once—_poof_—right off the face of the map.

How could hospital walls hold him back?

"You're right," she says and stands with effort. "Let's go."

And they stagger off again through the woods. Together. Sometimes hand in hand, when the limbs and roots and rocks jump up to block their path. They run as fast as they can go. Away from the town. They know—out of everyone here, those of the dungeon know—that they can never go further than the walls of the curse. But Hatter says he knows a cabin somewhere by the cliffs where they should be safe and he is not her prince—_she has no prince_—but she trusts him.

With some things, anyway, she trusts him.

Rumpelstiltskin never loved her. She does not know the man that he's become. Belle keeps her head down. She plunges on.

And Belle's scrub bottoms do not have pockets. But if they did, she'd have two pockets full of stones.


	3. Sticks and Stones

Accio-firewhiskey prompted: His mahogany cane

* * *

><p><strong>Sticks and Stones<strong>

* * *

><p>Hand in hand, they stumble into the clearing before the cabin and Belle is so exhausted she could weep—wants to weep—when Hatter flinches away from the broken moonlight of the hard packed earth and pulls her back with him hissing, "Belle, <em>wait."<em>

"What?" she mouths, and then, through the rain, she sees it. The hulking shoulders of a van, its back doors open to scattered red roses, sad and empty beside the wooden house.

Belle swallows a laugh, something very near a sob. They are so close. _They are so close._

"Game of Thorns," she whispers. "My papa must be inside."

Hatter's eyes are wild through the dappled silver light tumbling through the leaves. Water plasters down his hair, stains its color dark. Dirt smears both cheeks, a heavy muddy line above one eye. And though they have been running since shift-change, and even her bones have begun to ache, Belle still lifts a hand to clean his face.

He catches her fingers, holds her tight. His hands are stiff and frozen, lips chapped, eyes tired.

"Your father safe as houses?" he asks.

Belle looks at the window. Through the flickering light, she thinks she sees someone moving inside.

"He's not a brave man. But he's strong, and he loves me. He'll bring us clothes that fit, food—he'll help us escape."

Shadows make Hatter's face a stone. "And when the queen sends her cards?"

"He'll do his best."

"He'll break, you mean. Butter won't suit our works, mutton."

Belle glares, scrubs her eyes with the back of a wet and sullied sleeve.

"You have a better plan?" she demands. "It's February and it's _night_ and it's getting colder by the minute. Hatter, we won't make it."

"We've come too far not to make it." He sets his jaw, nods once, heaves a deep breath. "Well. Come on then, poppet."

And so, like thieves they steal across the clearing, frightened children with fingers locked.

"Papa?" Belle calls first, through the sliver where the wood doesn't meet the wall. A moment passes.

Hatter opens up the door.

Her father is cringing on the floor.

His face is bloodied. His hands are bound. She knows the look in his eyes—she has worn that look herself.

Regina stole years from her. She stole her life and her love and her stories. But Regina's men _will not steal her father now_.

Belle doesn't think. She doesn't plan. The man straddling the chair above her father's broken form begins to turn, and Belle launches herself from the doorway. She is not heavy—she is _enraged_—and her momentum and her _hatred _bring him to the ground.

The man grunts, still clutching his mahogany cane.

Her father's blood gathers in the scrollwork of the handle.

And Belle doesn't think. She wants to scratch out his eyes. She wants to disembowel him with her teeth. She has been locked up for a quarter of a century and the queen wanted a monster—the queen wanted to break her—well, how's this for fucking _social nicety?_

Blind, Belle sees only the cane. Deaf, she hears only the throbbing in her ears. She tears the cane from his white-knuckled hands and she brings it down across his face.

"Don't you _dare _touch my father, you motherfucking _beast!"_

One arm comes up to shield his eyes and Belle brings down the cane again.

Again.

Again.

And she is so tired. She is full of so much pain. But the queen won't take this. The queen won't take her family, too. Not her father. Not the only thing she has left. Not now. Not ever again.

And she brings the cane down.

And she brings the cane down.

"Belle! _Belle!_" Hatter. She thinks it must be Hatter. Who else could reach her now? "It's _me_."

But, no, she sees it is the man beneath her, blood running down his lips. She hefts the stick again, aiming the hooked handle for his eyes, until, bizarrely, he whispers, "It's just a cup."

And the cane slips from frozen fingers.

Belle stands. She trips. She staggers back until her shoulders hit the wall.

No. _No. (_It is her only coherent thought.)

Oceans thunder in her ears, but somehow Hatter's voice reaches her, urgent, from very far away, "I've got a gun, Belle. Do you need me? Shall I shoot?"

The man makes no move to rise, only lifts his head. Spits out blood and single, golden tooth.

"I know you," she says. Her whole body trembles as though it may break.

The man nods. His eyes are wet. "You do."

Belle wraps her arms tight around her torso, sinks to the ground, hoping desperately to hold her splitting seams.

"Don't shoot him, son," her father croaks, trying hard to stand. "He's not worth it. He's not worth you going to jail."

But she and Hatter are a pair—Queen of Hearts, Jack of all trades. He looks to her, gun so steady with the fallen man's face.

"Belle?"

"Don't shoot him, son," her father says again. But Belle can hardly hear.

Her eyes are on Rumpelstiltskin—her happily ever after—and her father's blood beneath his fingernails.


	4. Pebbles Underfoot

**Pebbles Underfoot**

* * *

><p>Belle stands uneasily in the wide, open backyard behind the bed and breakfast, surrounded by an army of little round tables all dressed in tan and accompanied by dozens of dapper little folding chairs. Just looking at the place settings, and already she feels underdressed. Mary Margaret had assured her this would be a garden party. A tiny fundraiser, just a little thing.<p>

"Believe me, I've been where you're at. If you want them to stop talking about you, you just have to meet them with your head held high and _make _them stop," she'd said and then she smiled, sweet and proud as bluebirds. "Emma taught me that."

So, here she is. Not yet noon and for coastal Maine, the sky is unusually clear and golden blue, but someone has built a lattice of paper lanterns above the tables just the same. At the other end of the grass, closest to the red brick fence and the building's back entrance, people swarm with the same pitch and swell as a kicked wasps' nest.

Belle avoids them. She sucks in deep breaths through her nose like Dr. Hopper told her, but makes sure to keep her back to the trees just the same. She and Hatter always have. They are too long used to watching for mobs.

There are no mobs here, Belle reminds herself. Just Mary Margaret and her _entire town_ full of friends.

Still, Belle's right side feels cold, her hands dangerously empty. She smooths down her borrowed skirt to give them something to do, but her skirt is not the problem, however strange the thin yellow fabric feels. She is used to walking with her hand in Hatter's, his heat a firm wall at her side. But he is lifting heavy loads of flowers for her father today. She is all on her own.

Looking around at the swell and clutch of people, Belle takes a tentative step forward. Her heart thuds in her throat at the sound of all that noise. Bravery is overrated, but bravery must be her nature now. She needs to face the town, to kill the Queen's rumors before they take root. And that means, apparently, that she must be seen now and again without her Hatter.

The springy green grass beneath her flats feels like a bear-trap waiting to spring. Belle wishes she were lifting heavy buckets full of flowers, too. But Mary Margaret had insisted—"It'll be hard, Rose, but it'll be worth it in the end. You can't let the mayor win,"—and her father had been so touched to know his daughter had friends…

The tablecloth on the table nearest her stirs without the wind to move it. Belle jumps. Her right hand goes instinctively to the red sash around her waist, to the switchblade she hid inside before she left the house this morning.

A small part of her whispers that she is being ridiculous—that, worse, she's acting _crazy. _But a larger part of her remembers the world before this one, the gnomes the queen sent crawling from every crack and crevice in the ground, the smell of blood thick in air full of magic, Hatter doubled over with both arms around his split stomach and Belle the only thing left standing between him and the world.

But the table cloth hikes itself up and rather than monsters, a tiny little girl clambers out. She wears her long brown hair in a braid over the shoulder of her blue party frock, already smattered with grass stains. Belle watches as she glances over at the seething crowd of people, and catching no one watching, darts across the yard and under another table.

Belle swallows, lets her hand fall from the knife hidden at her side. She feels absurdly torn between laughter and tears. Bravery is her nature. Once upon a time, she defied a monster and spat in the face of a queen.

But this, now—a happy garden party in the middle of the day—is so far beyond her tolerance she cannot even glimpse it sideways over the horizon of her fear.

Perhaps the little girl has the right idea.

Belle gathers her wits about her and crosses the grass, stoops to lift the tablecloth's hem.

"Hello," she says.

The little girl blinks back at her, alone but for the hazy outline of her imaginary friend. "Hello. Do you want to come in?"

"I would like that very much. May I?"

The girl shrugs, but Belle catches the shy, pleased smile before she turns her face away. "Alright."

Swiping a napkin off the table, she crawls in beside the girl, unfolds the ridiculously large white square and sits on it to keep from staining the back of Mary Margaret's borrowed dress.

"Thank you very much," Belle says when she's settled. She smiles, has to remember for a moment what to say. "My name's Rose. What's yours?"

"Alice." The girl cocks her head, tucks her knees to her chest. "Don't you like parties either?"

And this is easy. This is close and small and comfortable, and almost like Hatter. Belle breathes. She can do this. "Oh, no. Too many people. All that noise. They make me nervous."

Alice considers this.

"But they're grown-ups, like you," she says after a moment. "Aren't they your friends?"

"I suppose." Idly, Belle chews her lip, brushing the strands of bright green grass this way and that. "They'd like to be my friends, in any case."

"You don't want to be friends?"

"I'm not very good at being friends." She shrugs. "I've only got the one."

Alice nods, balances her chin on her knee. "I've only got Bit."

It takes Belle a moment before she realizes Bit is a name, not an unfortunate occurrence.

"Oh, you mean your long-eared companion?" she asks, nodding towards where the hazy outline of a vest-bedecked lagomorph looks up in surprise.

Alice's eyes shoot very wide. "You can see him!"

She should say nothing. She should smile and shrug and play coy. She should indulge the child, as adults do, in that patronizing way of the sane. And ten years from now, the child will grow up crooked and embittered. She'll miss the pixies bearing their teeth at the squirrels. She'll never see the monsters beneath the bed.

And bravery or no, that is a cruelty Belle cannot wish on this sad little stranger.

"Can you keep a secret?" she asks.

The girl nods. Belle grounds herself with fingers in the grass.

"I used to be a performer," she whispers. "Magic. It leaves a sort of residue after a while."

For a moment, neither speak. Alice seems to be thinking. At last, she plucks a dandelion. The bloom nearly fills her tiny hand.

Abruptly, Belle remembers changing dandelions into teacups and squeezes her eyes shut.

Alice's voice brings her back. "Can you do a trick?"

The thought fills her with tremors, like an avalanche of tiny stones into the pit of her stomach.

"No," Belle says. "Not without my friend."

"Your only friend?"

She nods, swallows. Takes the deep breaths Dr. Hopper told her to.

"Imagine them naked and unarmed,"Hatter had told her once. The thought makes her smile. She tries his trick, too, for good measure—at a garden party full of nudists and woefully overdressed.

"His name is Hatter," Belle says when she feels better. "He's very kind. And he's spectacular at magic shows."

"He knows magic, too?"

"Oh yes. We performed together."

"Were you good?"

"We were _very _good." This is a risk, but it feels… strangely _good_, speaking to someone who does not know her stories already, someone who nevertheless believes. "When we were young and very brave, we even tamed a phoenix."

Alice turns to better face her, her wide gray eyes alight with curiosity and awe. "What's that?"

Her heart clenches and Belle wonders, was she ever so young? Was there ever a time before her mother's funeral, before ogres and debts and mobs and deals, before magic tricks and phoenixes and singing for her supper?

"It's a bird made entirely of fire," she says, and wants to laugh at how Alice's jaw drops a little.

"There are birds like that?" she asks.

"There used to be." Belle smooths her dress down again, tucks her knees as close to her body as she can. It is not elegant, and once upon a time, her governess would have had her head for it. But today, Belle is hiding under a table at her would-be friend's garden party with a little girl barely older than her teeth. Elegance is not high on her list of priorities.

"That's wonderful," Alice decides at last. "And a little sad."

From his twitchy seat beside the table leg, Bit offers her something. A pocket watch, Belle thinks. And then, yes—when Alice takes it, it becomes real, solid, a heavy antique of burnished gold.

The girl removes a tiny key that hangs from a thin gold chain around her neck. She slots it into a hole in the back of the watch, winds it, then hands it back. When it leaves her fingers, it disappears again. Her imagined creature shakes it once, nibbles on a corner, and seems to find it satisfactory. He drops the watch back into his breast pocket and becomes a little more solid around his edges.

Bit looks like nothing so much as a very large white rabbit. He blinks at Belle with watery red eyes and she discovers rabbits, when child-size, are quite unnerving.

She focuses her attention back to little Alice instead.

"Alice is a pretty name," she says.

"I don't think so. I always wanted to be named something special. Like Amaranthine or maybe Bruce."

"Bruce?"

"Like the super hero."

Belle pulls up a clover, turns it over in her palm. She doesn't know anything about super heroes, Bruce or otherwise. Instead, she says, "I like the name Alice. My Hatter had a daughter named Alice."

"Oh," Alice blinks, cants her head to the side. "Was she your daughter, too?"

"No. Oh, no," Belle laughs to hide her nerves, sweeps fragments of grass of her pretty yellow skirt. Hatter's history runs like fire beneath her skin. The comforting weight of his secrets takes the hurt and poison out of hers. She says, "I never knew Alice."

And this new Alice nods, so solemn. She shares a glance with Bit, and for a moment she is far, far older than she has any right to be. "What happened to her?" she asks.

_He lost her, _Belle does not say, _like we lose everyone but each other. _

Instead she says, "I expect Alice lived a long and happy life, surrounded by many dozens of grandchildren." When the little girl narrows her eyes in suspicion she smiles and adds, "Hatter and I are older than we look."

"How old?"

"I'll be fifty-eight next May. I believe Hatter's turning sixty in the fall."

The little girl nods. "That makes sense," she says, though it does not, not really, not without this lunatic curse for backdrop and scenery.

Bit taps his watch. Alice frowns, purses her lips. "It's almost noon," she says, and seems to regret it. "I have to go."

Belle smiles, though she does not, not at all, want to go back into the world above, where the people are not naked and very well could be armed.

"Alright," she says. "It was nice speaking to you."

The girl pauses, one tiny hand lifting up the hem of the tablecloth. "Will I see you again?"

And she is honest, because she is probably insane and crazy people tend to tell the truth. "I don't know."

"I'd like to see your phoenix."

Belle shakes her head. This hurts. Her mouth tastes bitter with moldering regret. "Our phoenix flew away. A long time ago."

"Why?"

"We tried to hold on too tightly."

Again, that ancient look from eyes far and above too young. "Well, you won't do _that_ again," Alice says, and before Belle can ask her what she means by that, Bit leaps out from under the cloth and his unimaginary girl scampers after him.

_One day I hope to have a daughter like you_, Belle thinks, and smiles, though the sharpened corners hurt. Gingerly, she ducks her head and tries to climb from under the table as elegantly as a fully grown woman can.

"I'll admit," she hears a too, too familiar accent say, "this is not where I'd have expected to run into you again."

_No. _

Belle's jaw clenches. Her right hand draws taught, searching for the fingers that are not in hers. But Hatter is not here. Hatter is not here for the first time in twenty-eight years and bravery is her nature now—she will have to fight her own battles today.

Belle turns.

Rumpelstiltskin stands at the other side of the table. How long has he been standing there? How much has he heard?

His suit coat bulges over his left arm—vaguely, she remembers hearing bones snap, the second ambulance that came to take him away while Emma put a blanket over her shoulders and Hatter whispered stories to calm her down.

Otherwise, he is mostly unchanged. Some swelling in his jaw, bruises still darkening his face.

She's been told his name is Mr. Gold now, but she does not believe it.

"What do you want," her voice is flat. It is not a question.

He breathes, as if even this is more opening than he expected. Gold shifts forward, moves his weight for a moment onto his bad knee, but Belle sidles left, keeps the table between them and one hand on the knife hidden at her side.

He stills as if he has been stuck. She knows the look. It was appropriate before, but hardly now.

"I want to apologize, Miss French," he murmurs, his voice so sweet and pained and low. "It seems we've started out on an… extremely bad foot, as it were."

"You attacked my father." She wonders, should she draw her knife? Should she call for Mary Margaret? No doubt someone friendly is close-by.

But Gold only nods, once, and does not meet her eyes. When he speaks, she can almost see the gap where his gold tooth used to be. "Yes."

Belle sucks in a deep breath through her nose. Her back is not to the woods.

"Abducted him at gunpoint."

Her back is to the Bed and Breakfast. She will have to edge around him to get out.

"Yes." Gold touches his fingers briefly to his jaw, almost smiles. "You made your feelings on the matter abundantly clear."

Abruptly, she realizes. He expects something from her.

Belle thinks she might be shaking. The whole world is making a terrible din. She can't feel her arms. This is… too much. She loved this man once. She loved him enough to try to save him. Him. And he is not the same. She remembers golden scales and claws and bitter smiles, and the acidic twist of his mouth is the same, but his eyes are all wrong—all _human—_and it is too much.

Doctor Hopper gave her tiny blue pills for this, but as far as she remembers, they are in Hatter's front coat pocket.

"Well, then," she manages, because she is brave, or was once, and cannot seem to remember how to extricate herself from these kinds of situations. "Go on."

Gold breathes. A deep, shattering breath that must hurt—Emma said she cracked more of his ribs than he cracked her father's—but he seems lighter for it. The sun plays on his face and he looks human. He looks _human. _This man, this sorcerer who would not lift a finger to save her from the queen, even knowing he was the _only thing_ that made her a target.

All those mobs because of him. Those hungry nights because of him. All the fear and despair and endless _running _because of him. Escaping from the dungeon, finally, after twenty eight years and knowing better—knowing better but still _wanting to see him_. Finding a safe place, only to find h_im in it_, beating her father with his cane.

And Gold stands in the sun with his pretty name and his lie of a face, and he smiles, tight-lipped so as not to flash a missing tooth, and he says, "It's… a complicated story. Put simply, he stole something of great value from me. I very much wanted it back."

Belle is brave, and bravery should not make her violent, but nevertheless, she wants to take his cane again. She wants to _smash his fucking face in._

"My papa is not a thief."

Gold tips his head. "Have you asked him? I think you'll find otherwise."

"What did he take, then?" she demands. He doesn't immediately answer and Belle wants to strike him. It worries her. She is not usually so violent, but then, she does not usually find herself without Hatter, across a rickety garden table from one of the queen's best men. "_Well_? What was worth breaking his ribs for?"

She sees him swallow. His throat bobs. His eyes dart down, away, then up to hers.

"A teacup. It was… chipped a long time ago, by someone I loved very much and it's all I have left of—"

"_No." _This is too much. This is _too goddamned much. _Belle's fingers clench on the back of a chair, but she can't feel them. She's suspended in a storm cloud—she feels nothing but cold, hears nothing but wind roaring in her ears. "How dare you. How _dare_ _you_."

"What do you mean? Dearie, it's true—"

"_Fuck you, _it's true. Why? Why would you do this? What kind of sick pleasure do you get out of this? Is this some sort of deal? Some sort of bargain you have with the queen, is that it?"

He leans back as if struck. Then, bizarrely, his face brightens. He steps forward, eyes wide and urgent. "What did you say?"

Belle claps a hand over her mouth. Late—far too late. They'll lock her up again, with reason this time. The world here is full of machines and cars and things that fly that are not birds, and people don't have queens or magic here.

"Belle—"

_Belle_. Her name is _Rose_ here. Only Hatter calls her Belle.

"Don't," she snarls. "Don't pretend. You don't _get _to pretend. Not after what you did."

And after all he did, the liar, the traitor, the _beast_—he has the gall to stand there and look at her with _hope _in his eyes. "Belle, if I'd have known, I swear I'd have found you."

"_No_," she whispers. Once again, faced with him, it is her only coherent thought.

"You and your magician—I thought… I didn't realize. Belle, I thought you'd _died_."

"You're a liar."

"I'm not, I swear." He smiles. Despite the missing tooth, he dares to risk a smile. "Belle, dearie, _you_ _remember. _When have you ever known me to lie?"

Belle feels the world slipping beneath her feet. Once upon a time, she kissed this man and his curse receded. True love, she'd thought then, but true love should never feel like this.

She swallows. She can't breathe. She is breathing far too fast.

Her head swims. The world stutters. Nearing, nearing, the crowd laughs like hyenas on the prowl. Soon they will close in. Soon they will call her a devil's whore, demand a show for her life, and she can't do magic. She can't cast a spell without Hatter and Hatter isn't here. Hatter is lifting flowers for her father on the other side of town.

And Daddy was so happy knowing she'd found _such a nice young man_, but they are not young or nice and she needs Hatter—needs Hatter with his dozen different switchblades and hidden razor knives. Needs Hatter with his spells that hurt, with his glances that speak words, with his memories of their shared fire bird.

Hatter is safe. Hatter is safe. Hatter is safe, but _Hatter is not here_.

"Belle, please," Rumpelstiltskin's voice breaks through her haze, three decades too late. Suddenly he is nearer. Her vision is a blur—she can't breathe—she sees only the bright purple of his pocket square. He whispers, "You were right. I'm a coward. And I'm so, so sorry. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you."

Belle shakes her head. She cannot speak. Her cheeks are wet again.

"Let me try a bit of bravery now, eh?" he whispers, sounding like himself, looking a lie. "I kept the cup because I love you, Belle. I never stopped."

And Belle realizes something.

She is _not_ brave. Not here.

When Gold lifts a hand to touch her, his fingers barely stirring the hairs on the back of her arms, Belle bolts. She hears the crowd alight. Startled questions burst into the air like crows. Soon, they will follow. They will chase. They will call her a witch, a heathen, a beast. They will pursue her with fire until they smoke out her den and she and Hatter will have to run again.

Belle staggers. Her bloody shoes are not made for running so she kicks them off and leaves them behind, two red ballet flats cockeyed in the bright green grass.

Behind her, Belle hears Emma snarl, "God_damn _it, Gold. What part of _no contact_ did you not understand?"

But she runs. Despite the pebbles underfoot, she sprints through the garden and into the woods, and Belle does not stop. Not to turn, and certainly not to look.

"If you wake up tomorrow, and I am not there?" Hatter had told her once, another world ago, "Don't look for me. Just run. As fast as you can, mutton—_go_."


	5. A Frumious Mess

Anon prompted: "You're blood of my blood."

* * *

><p><strong>A Frumious Mess<strong>

* * *

><p>Muddied to the calves, leaves and briars tangled in her hair, Belle careens through the front door of her father's flower shop. Hatter takes one look at her and drops everything. A bucket of yellow roses, a pair of scissors, a block of foam—all of it falls to the floor with a series of dull thuds—and he dashes out from behind the counter.<p>

"I just mopped the floor, you lunatic," he says and it's meant to be flippant—a joke, something to soothe—but his voice clenches with anxiety and when he sweeps her up into his arms like a new bride, his arms squeeze too tight.

Still, it feels like breathing again.

Belle buries her face in his neck, fingers clenched in his—_her_—apron. She doesn't cry. Crying won't make the world a proper size again. She sucks in great heaving breaths instead, makes a little flame with her fingers to remind herself she can.

She can. She can. Hatter's here. She can.

"Crumbs in the works," he murmurs, striding for the back room with her in her arms. "Oh, what a _frumious_ mess. I knew this was bad idea. I knew it."

From the safety of his neck, Belle whispers, "It had to be done."

"And there were other ways to do it, mutton." He shakes his head and sits her gently on the flower counter, eases her bare and filthy feet into the sink—winces with her when she hisses at the touch of cool water against a thousand scrapes and bruises she hadn't known she had.

Hatter leans in, touching his forehead to hers. For a long moment, they stay like that, eyes closed and faces pressed together. His breath smells sweet, like the candies that forever line his pockets. Belle knows hers is still sour with fear and spoilt adrenaline, but Hatter does not pull away. His hands do not leave her shoulders, his nose remains tucked neatly beside her own.

"Whatever happened to your lovely shoes?" he asks at last.

Belle thinks of tumbling over that impossibly wide expanse of grass, the tables and lawn ornaments and startled people and finally, _finally_ the woods. She shivers. She knows better—should have kept her back to the trees. How many years have taught her this? How many mobs and fire and unfriendly towns? Why had she strayed? Had she lost her _mind?_

Sucking in deep, shuttering breaths, Belle tries to quiet her trembling heart. She says, "I don't know. I—I fucked up, Hatter."

Hatter only blinks, pulls back a little. One clever hand flashes up to gently, so gently, untangle a long hook of thorns from her hair. "How's that, mutton?" he murmurs.

For a moment, she can't speak. The world outside is massive, so heavy, so ready to fall, and she cannot—cannot even think where to begin.

She manages, "_He_ was there."

And because Hatter knows her, because he knows her loves and losses, because they never speak of names, he understands.

He snarls, "What'd the whiffling bastard do, eh?" and desperately, in a broken sort of way, Belle wants to laugh.

"Your accent's showing, Hatter," she whispers.

He closes his eyes, starts again. "What happened, Belle? What'd he do to you?"

"He apologized." And then, in a rush and realization, "Well, no. He _didn't_. He didn't apologize at all. He said he wanted to, then he called my papa a thief and said he'd never stopped loving me."

"Oh, Mary Ann," Hatter breathes. He shakes his head, thumbs another few leaves from behind her right ear. "You want I should kill him?"

Belle startles at the sound of her own laugh, but once she's started, she finds it hard to stop. She must laugh—she must. If she does not, she will shatter down the seams, and something worse than any jabberwocky will burst out from the gaping wound of her chest.

This world… this world is _too much. _And here they are, still together, she and Hatter—dirty, old and useless clowns.

Belle sits on a counter in her father's flower shop, her feet in a sink and battered bracken in her hair, and she must be insane. She must be. Because the alternative—that this world is vast and incomprehensible and terrifying and _new_—is far too much to bear.

But Hatter knows her. When the laughter turns to coughs, to sobs, he wraps his arms around her shoulders and tucks her head beneath his chin.

"Shh," he whispers. "Shh. It's alright, mutton. You're blood of my blood, yeah? You need me to kill this bloke, I'll find a way. Poison his tea, razors in his tie, a little friendly arson…?"

Belle presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. She is shaking and she knows she should fetch the pills Dr. Hopper gave her, but Hatter's coat is so far across the room.

"I killed a man with a card trick once," Hatter murmurs, stroking the last shattered stick from her hair. "The big wizards, the ones they say it takes a vorpal blade to kill? That's just it, poppet. They're looking for the magic swords. They never think to check the small things. It'll be easy. Quick as rabbits."

"No."

"No?" Hatter pulls back, his hands on her shoulders to look her in the face. "But if he comes after you?"

"He won't."

"He came after your father."

Sucking in a deep breath, Belle pushes a hand through her hair. "I think I need a pill."

Hatter flicks his fingers at his jacket. Like an obedient pet, it flies to his outstretched hand, and with a minimum of fuss and fumbling, Belle takes her medicine.

"Breathe like Dr. Hopper says," Hatter murmurs. And sitting in her father's sink, Belle leans her head against the wall of Hatter's chest and tries.

"He said he loved me," she whispers.

"Dr. Hopper? He seems a lovely bloke. I approve."

It's a poor attempt at a joke. Still, Belle smiles. She appreciates the effort and Hatter relaxes some. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then reaches under the counter, finds a washcloth for her feet.

"I think separating is a bad idea," he says as she gingerly eases the mud from her heels. "Too many cards between here and there. We shouldn't do it again."

Belle tries to concentrate on the mud—it's easier than lost loves and wars, sealing wax and kings—but her thoughts circle and circle back like lost birds.

"He didn't find me," she whispers to the water in the little tub. "How could he love me, but not find me? If it was you, Hatter, I'd tear apart the _world_."

Hatter doesn't say a word. When she looks up, his lovely doggish face is set and grim.

"He never loved you, poppet. He certainly doesn't now."

And Belle knew that. She knew that days and years and decades past, when Rumpelstiltskin swore and screamed and shook her by the shoulders.

For a kiss.

He'd panicked.

It makes no sense. Hurting her over a kiss, beating her father for a cup she chipped. There'd been years between _here_ and _there_. Performances. Towns on every border knew the Mad Hatter and his Mary Ann. If Rumpelstiltskin wanted her, he could have found her.

The queen certainly had.

Belle wipes the last of the mud from her feet, rinses her hands and sits back.

"Hatter, what are we supposed to do?"

Hatter presses his mouth tight, leans in again to touch his brow to hers.

"I don't know, love," he says. "I really don't."


	6. A Knack For Monsters

A Knack for Monsters

symbolic-everything prompted: A crunch of glass underfoot

intrikate88 prompted: ouroboros

* * *

><p><strong>A Knack for Monsters<strong>

* * *

><p>Later that evening, the doorbell rings. Halfway to the couch with two cups of tea in hand, Hatter goes rigid, stiff-legged, like a dog ready to fight. Immediately, Belle's father is out of his chair. Maybe it's the pills he took at dinner, but Moe French moves quickly for a man with three broken ribs and his arm in a sling.<p>

He says, "I'll get it. You kids stay out of sight, yeah?" and with one last glance at her, limps out into the front hall.

Her father is not a brave man anymore. Where once he fought a dragon in his youth, here he flinches at the sound of tires in the night. But now, Belle's heart clenches to see his shoulders high and level once again, the bearing of an old king at war.

She bares her teeth in pride—it hurts, somehow, burning like breaking feathers on a phoenix tail. Hatter stands at her side, his hip against the arm of the couch. Together, they twist their fingers at his back in a cantrip for honor and good luck.

Her father is not a brave man, but he loves like the sun, and he will stand between them and the world as long as his legs hold up.

When Moe returns, he comes with the sheriff close at his back.

"Sit anywhere you like," he says, gesturing at the scattering of plush, well-worn furniture in the den.

Most of it is older than this world, pieces her mother loved once upon a time, before she died. Some have been reupholstered—and in the case of the fainting chair, _un_-upholstered, made into a bookshelf—but this house is still in many ways a castle.

Emma seems to sense it. She settles gingerly at the edge of an armchair across from Belle, sets her plastic grocery bag on the floor beside the table.

"I brought your shoes," she says, indicating the bag. "You uh… pulled a Cinderella on us."

"Thank you." Belle smiles and keeps her hands tightly folded in her lap. "My knight in shining badge."

Emma snorts. "Yeah," she says. "About that. Do you want to file a restraining order?"

This is not a familiar term—yet another word to learn, like airplanes and television and what to do when the microwave beeps—but at least this phrase is clear enough.

Something she'll say to make Rumpelstiltskin go away.

Emma is a nice girl, but her words are not strong enough to take on any weapon in Rumpelstiltskin's hoard.

"It'll keep Gold away from you," Emma adds when she does not speak. "No contact, not with you, not with your family. It'd be like he didn't exist."

Hatter's hand finds her shoulder. Belle can't see him—she cannot turn her head away from Emma—and it is nice to know the world hasn't gobbled him up. He squeezes, once, and Belle shakes her head.

"No, thank you," she says.

Emma frowns, cocks her head.

"Belle," she starts to speak, takes a breath and pauses instead. Very like the mayor's boy, Belle notices, but when Emma starts again, her voice is gentle, not wheedling.

"Listen," she says. "I've never seen anybody run as fast as you ran from him today and I've seen guys trying to outrun police dogs. I can get you the forms, no problem, and I promise—no judge in the world is going to turn you down."

Standing in the doorway, her father hums his disapproval. "Probably better that we don't, Sherriff."

With pursed lips, Emma glances between them. The look in her eyes says there's deep water here and damned if she won't find a stick deep enough to reach the bottom.

"Now, hold up a minute. You don't have to press charges for a restraining order, if that's what you're worried about. It's just a couple of forms, a court appearance, and that's it."

And Emma is a nice girl, but somehow, sitting across from the sheriff feels like drifting on an unsettled sea. Belle swallows. The room spins and canters, but she can do this. She can do this. Once upon a time, she used to be brave.

Still, she risks a glance at Hatter, catches him licking his lips. It's a nervous habit, a hawker's tell.

"Little manxome piece of paper's not gonna stop him," Hatter says. Belle takes his hand from her shoulder, twines their fingers together and nests them together on his knee.

Abruptly, his knee stops shaking. He seems startled, as if he hadn't noticed his leg jogging away without him.

And for a long moment, Emma narrows her eyes and looks between them all.

Once, when Belle was very young, she read a story about Gertha the Bold, a dragon hunter in the Western mountains. She'd always imagined Gertha something like this girl—red leather for scales, men's breeches, and a tangled golden mane. Gertha's eyes were black, not green, but otherwise, Emma sits with shoulders taut in the heart-hearth of her father's old kingdom, and she is more than ready to slay dragons.

"What I don't understand," she says at long last, meeting Belle's eyes like an oncoming truck. "He's just a man. A seriously messed up snake of a man, but a man, just the same. You caved half his chest in, Belle—he's obviously human. Why are you still so scared of him?"

Belle catches Hatter's eyes for a moment. Minutely, he shakes his head. Emma catches it. Of course Emma catches it. Dragon hunters must be quick, ready for teeth in the shadows.

And Belle wants to tell her. She wants to trust this woman who found her beating a man to death and wrapped her in a blanket just the same. Who stood between her and the Evil Queen without knowing or caring for the danger she placed herself in. Who said, _"No. They're coming with me," _and _made_ the sorceress walk away.

And she wants to tell her. But there is no way to say, "because he's magic," and still sound sane.

"He's more dangerous than he advertises," Belle says instead, and this is half a lie, but true enough. "He has ways of reaching people without ever lifting a finger."

And Emma grins, all teeth, a little trick stolen from the dragons she slays.

"Well, tell you what, then," she says. "He comes at you in any way? I'll lock him up and make sure he never sees the light of day again."

"You can do that?" Moe asks.

Emma shrugs. "Technically or really? Because technically, that's not legal, but I'm learning law and justice are two different things in Storybrooke. You wanna guess which one I swore to uphold?"

Belle smiles. Even with the world a tipping, frightening sea, she smiles.

Emma could. She believes it. If anyone, Emma could.

But Hatter shakes his head, bares his teeth. "Not worth the risk. Don't want to spend any more time than I have to waiting for the frumious trap to break."

Emma's eyes barely flicker to Hatter. She watches Belle instead, gauging, her head ever so slightly cocked, the corner of her lip caught between her teeth.

At last she says, "That's alright. But you've got my number, Belle, if you need anything."

Belle nods. She hears water crashing in her ears, the cry of gulls thrashing against the rocks. A second conversation runs fast like fire beneath the surface of their words and she can't hear it—she can't hear anything over the rush of her own blood—but Emma does.

She thinks it might be all Emma hears. The sheriff looks right through them. Their protests may as well be etching on a leaded window.

Belle swallows. If she is a dragon, she is hardly large enough to make this hunter a new pair of boots.

"I have your number," she agrees.

"Was that all you needed, sheriff?" Hatter asks.

He stands and he means to put himself between Belle and the world again, but Emma's faster. Dragon hunters always are. She says, "Just one more thing. I've been wondering. Where's your accent from, anyway?"

Hatter's shoulder draw taught. Belle stands up. "Australia," she says, and draws the dragon hunter's eyes back to hers.

Emma makes a sound, something like a surprised grunt. "Doesn't sound like yours."

And she's watching, listening, hearing the conversation they aren't having.

Belle stands her ground.

"Australia's a big place."

"Huh," she says again. She does not smile. Belle wonders what she heard. "Alright then. I guess I'll see myself out."

* * *

><p>It takes an hour before the conversation surfaces again, over a sink full of dirty dishes and Belle up to her arm in suds.<p>

"_Frumious_, Hatter? _Manxome_? You are slipping."

Standing at her side, with exaggerated care, he settles a newly dry plate into the plastic rack. "Don't take your wizard out on me."

"This isn't Wonderland," she snaps. "Can't you just say _fuck _like a normal man?"

"She unnerves me."

"She could unnerve a rock. We have to be careful. If it gets back to the queen that we remember—"

He snatches up another plate, snarls, "It _won't."_

Belle glances at him from the corner of her eye. His shoulders are taut, his jaw tight enough to crack. "You're not this careless," she says. "What's going on?"

Hatter shrugs it off. "I'm getting old."

"Hawkers don't get old, Hatter, they get _dead. _That's what you've always said."

"Well, maybe I changed my mind."

"Or maybe you've been into my pills."

"Listen, mutton, I've been really _fucking _kind, but do you honestly think you're the only one that _goddamned _place _fucked up_?"

"Dr. Hopper—"

"I'm not going to Dr. Hopper."

"So you're giving up?"

"Giving up?" he slams the plate down into the rack. Bits of porcelain fragment off and slide towards the drain. "I'm keeping _safe. _I'm not spilling my guts to a frumi—_fucking _cricket. And I haven't said a word about your going, mutton, because it seems like he makes you happy. But by the knights, I'm not spilling my guts to a bug that won't _shut up_."

No voices were raised, no gazes met or accusations made, but Belle feels her hands begin to shake. She lifts her arms from the soapy water and strips off her plastic yellow gloves.

Hatter watches her, head down, ready to run. Gently, she reaches out and takes his hand in hers. A tendril of magic runs over the back of his hand and into hers.

"We're not fighting about pills, are we?" she asks. "I don't… I don't care if you take mine. You're welcome to, Hatter. Yours if you want them."

Sucking in a shaky breath through his nose, he tugs her close, tucks her head beneath his chin.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She presses into him, feeling his heat like a wall, like an aging kingdom.

"I as well. It's just, this thing… I'm afraid one day we'll wake up and be back at the beginning. Like the snake eating its own tail, hurting and hungry, again and again. Just this, this story, forever."

"We've stayed in one place too long. That's our problem, mutton," he says, his free hand tangling in her hair. "You and me, we're not meant to settle down."

She shakes her head, leaving tearstains on the lapels of Hatter's smart vest.

"I'm so worried it's not over."

Hatter shakes his head and breathes. "You know it's not."

Belle wants to laugh.

"Lucky us," she whispers to his pocket. "I've got a knack for monsters."

* * *

><p>In the middle of the night, Belle wakes to the sound of breaking glass. She finds Hatter shaking, a battered felt top hat on his head, another clenched in one bleeding fist.<p>

Avoiding bits of shattered mirror, she pads into the hall without a word, returns with tweezers and antiseptic and little blue pills. The pills come first. Then the glass. Once upon a time, she'd have used boiled dandelion to fend off infection. Tonight, she uses Neosporin. The spell she works to close the gashes remains unchanged. She knows this routine.

When she has finished, Belle eases Hatter back into bed and he does not protest. With their backs to the moon, they curl together like lost children, like seashells tucked one inside the other. Legs tangle. Arms alight. Belle pushes the bed sheets down to keep them from catching fire. Hatter's magic shutters and sobs, wrenching at hers.

Together, they clutch and cuddle, shivering in the dark while a funeral pyre cascades down their shoulders, mourning the loss of former lives.

Two broken phoenixes, they light the room.

Belle tucks her face in Hatter's shoulder, rubs restless circles down his back, and tries not to cry as they shatter.

* * *

><p>The next morning, they are better. Hatter zips up the back of her sundress with a smile and drops his newsboy hat down over her ears. Belle grins. She pulls the hat low over her eyes and does a slow tango by herself, slippered feet sliding over shards of mirror in the middle of the bedroom. A moment later Hatter joins her. They dance together down the stairs and her father laughs.<p>

"No playing on the stairs, children," he says and Hatter winks at him.

Belle hugs her father good morning today. She is better now at touching people, and Moe French is so gentle, so careful with his old warrior's hands, as if he is afraid she might break.

"Did you eat yet, Moe?" Hatter asks, padding into the kitchen, still in bare feet despite the glass. "I thought I'd make omelets today."

Belle smiles to herself and does not listen for her father's response. She slips out the kitchen door, instead, meaning to start the morning with the paper and the feel of grass between her toes.

But while the paper is there, as always, sitting neatly on the stoop… it is not alone.

A hybrid tea rose rests beside it. This one wears an odd color—not quite red and with a tender yellow settled deep down in the cup of the petals. Its stem is corkscrewed and crooked. Not one of theirs. People never buy roses with less than perfect stems.

This flower made its home in a trellis, maybe. Or a wild briar bush.

Poetic, Belle thinks. She is not a fan of poetry.

Carefully, avoiding the thatching of hooked and angled thorns, she stoops to pick up the flower by its bloom. Underneath, she finds a note.

_Belle—_

_Sorry to have so grievously upset you yesterday. It was not my intent._

_Could we meet? Wherever you feel comfortable. I'd like to explain._

_—Gold_

For a long moment, Belle stands frozen, the open door behind her, a grinning expanse of lawn waiting ahead. The sun beats down, burning the morning mist from the grass, but she can't feel it.

She thinks she should probably hide the note from Hatter. If he sees it, he'll do something wretched and now, here, they won't be able to run from the consequences. Belle thinks she _should_ hide it. It should be her secret. One of those things, like names, that they don't share.

But he is her other half, her chosen twin, and she needs him.

So Belle pivots, blindly, and makes her way back inside the kitchen. Hatter stands at the stove, preparing to crack a half-dozen eggs. He takes one look at her face, and sets the egg he holds back inside the carton.

They do not speak. They have little need for words. Belle only hands him the note and the rose.

Hatter reads. His face darkens like an oncoming storm. His jaw locks. Magic flares from his shoulders and eyes. A moment later he strides out into the living room to find her father.

"Knave of Hearts can't keep his fingers out of the damn _pies," _he snarls, thrusts the paper in her father's lap.

And Moe's face goes thunderous dark. He spares the paper half a glance and asks, "Where'd you get this, sweetheart?"

Belle feels her oceans rising. The world groans beneath her feet, heavy and ponderous and far, far too large.

She can only touch Hatter's hem and point.

"The front stoop," Hatter gives her voice. "With the paper." And then, "You have this bastard's number, Moe?"

For a moment, her father looks ready only to take up his old sword. "Yeah," he says at last. "Yeah. I've got his mobile. Keeps it on him at all times. In case of business, the plonker."

Rifling through a messy stack of papers beside the couch, Moe comes up with a weatherworn scrap of numbers and hands it to Hatter. "He'll answer."

And easy as that, Hatter calls him. Belle thinks distantly that this sort of thing should be harder. This new world with its strange mechanical magic that Hatter caught onto so blindingly fast. She still cannot work the microwave, has trouble with the stove, but Hatter punches ten buttons and doesn't waste time with pleasantries.

When the ringing on the other end stops, low and harsh like growling dogs, like a monster woken hungry in the night, Hatter growls, "Listen up, Jabberwock. Come near my Mary Ann again and I will cripple you."

On the far distant end, Belle hears an older beast rumbling, but cannot make out the words, and whatever Gold says, Hatter laughs.

"No. You will _try_."

"Hatter," Belle whispers. Her fingers find his hem, and a little of the raging darkness eases from his eyes.

"Have a nice day, Jabberwock," he says. "You know where you stand."


	7. Firebird

shadowhostage prompted: Forget-me-nots (and or lavender).

* * *

><p><strong>Firebird<strong>

* * *

><p>Belle sits with her hands in her lap and picks at the hem of her dress, trying halfheartedly to unravel the stitches.<p>

"Is that all you want to talk about today?" Archie asks. Idly, he taps his pen against the side of his leg and Belle wonders if it's a nervous habit.

Is he afraid to be in the same room with her, even with the two of them seated nicely in their plush leather chairs? So many people in this town are. It wouldn't surprise her to find the man she tells her secrets to one of their number.

Well, the man she tells _some_ secrets to. Most of her secrets can only be whispered across years, between padded cells. Most come with the feeling of Hatter's spells in the dark, with the bone battering exhaustion of fighting against wards that keep them from casting, to keep them from escaping when they only—when they only _need to_ _touch._

Most secrets span a history. Many sink their roots in nightmares. And if Belle were to lean in, and whisper him a story of her life, Archie would find no peace in his bed tonight.

So instead she nods. She says simply, "Yes."

Archie accepts this with a nod of his own, but chews idly at the corner of his lip. Again, his pen taps against his knee.

"I'd like to see you again next Monday, Rose," he says at last. "I understand Mary Margaret's party was important to you last week, but I have to say, with um… circumstances such as they are, I'm not comfortable with you missing too many appointments."

And Belle does not say that once upon a time, _circumstances_ woke her in a cold sweat to the sounds of a mob outside her and Hatter's door. That, with no way out, Hatter jumped them through a mirror, into Wonderland, right in the middle of a devastating war.

She says, "I'll try." Then smiles.

Usually a smile goes a long way to sending the good doctor relaxing into the plush back of his leather chair, but today Archie frowns. He clears his throat and shifts his vest, but his eyes are honest and warm and never leave hers.

"Last session, you mentioned Jefferson doesn't like you coming here. How's that going?"

Belle wishes she could shake her head, mime to him the answer without resorting to speech. But Archie seems to have a policy against yes and no questions. One of his head-shrinker tricks—like nothing for her fiddle with on the table, though still, _still_, his pen dances against his knee.

"Jefferson doesn't like doctors," she says instead. The name feels odd in her mouth. Wrong.

He is Hatter. He has always _been_ Hatter.

And once upon a time, she was Belle, who became Mary Ann, who became Alice, who became Rose.

Archie considers her with the gaze of a man with something to sell. He says, "That's very understandable. But how do _you_ feel, Rose?"

She doesn't, but Archie won't like that answer. And he certainly won't like to know how low her pills are growing. She takes hers by halves, but Hatter's glossy all the time, and soon she'll need another piece of paper to take down to the pharmacy. Then Archie will change her dosage, probably. Talk to her again about addiction and crutches and how the pills are only there to teach her to walk again.

She has spoken so much today. She has been so careful to say so little, and she is exhausted. Moreover, her hour is up. Belle fixes her eyes to her father's watch. She likes to wear it now. The thick steel band weighs her wrist down. It reminds her she cannot float away. That she has family here. She is not alone. Rooms are once again filled with light.

Even this room, cluttered close with so many chests of drawers and smudgy paintings on the wall. Belle traces with her eyes a photo of the harbor, a model boat.

"Rose?"

She sighs and lifts her eyes to his again. "I don't know."

Archie takes a deep breath. He's disappointed. Her happy ending doesn't suit his _good vs. not_ sensibilities. But he is sweet and kind. He says, "Alright. That's fair. Why don't you think about that question for next time, okay?"

Belle nods. When he stands, she stands. Strange men often try to lead her through doors by pressing her shoulder or back, but Archie never touches—not unless she reaches for him first—and because she so appreciates his distance, Belle lets him guide her out into the waiting room without protest.

He stops just inside the door with her led safely into the world again. This time, he manages to smile. Something wistful. He saves these wistful smiles like candies, just for this occasion.

"And if you need anything at all—if something happens, or you just want to talk—you're more than welcome. You've still got my numbers, right?"

Belle pats the pocket of her coat.

"I keep them with me."

It feels like admitting weakness, but Archie's face lights. And he is not a… not a beautiful man, but lately, she finds she quite likes looking at him. When he smiles, he makes a sort of magic. For a while, the whole world feels like sunshine.

"Do you? That's good. That's very good. I'm glad." Archie swings his arm to encompass the waiting room, shuffles awkwardly in the doorframe. "Well, here we are. I'll see you next Monday, Rose."

She nods—finally, finally back to _yes_ and _no_—and turns to go.

But in the waiting room, the _queen's boy_ sits with a fat leather book tight against his chest. His head pulls up to look at her—dark eyes, like the goblins in Undercroft—and he smiles. His teeth are broad and flat. Like horses' teeth, she wants to think. But Belle sees only monsters in that face.

"Rose?" Archie asks. His voice echoes miles away.

The monster child's eyes alight. It—_he, it's a boy-child, a real child—_grins. "Belle!"

And Belle goes very, very cold. "What did you call me?"

Archie steps out of his office entirely, fully into the waiting room. Belle wonders if this is a nervous gesture also.

She wonders who he is protecting by putting himself between her and the queen's boy.

"Henry, this is Rose French," Archie says, his voice carefully even. "Why don't you wait for me in my office? We can talk about this in a minute."

"But I think she remembers," he protests. "Like my mom. She escaped with Hatter from the dungeon—"

Oceans rise in Belle's ears. She cannot feel her fingers, she cannot feel her legs. She can only feel her father's watch weighing down her arm—_she is here, she is still here_—feel the strength in her jaw as she clenches tight enough to crack her own teeth.

The queen knows.

The queen _knows._

But Belle can salvage this. She can save them. This is hawker's business. Mary Ann's, Alice's. Play the audience, run the show. Keep your face from the light, your back to the trees.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she breathes.

She sees everything in too-vivid colors. She sees Archie's throat bob as he swallows, as he says, "Henry, go wait inside."

"But, Archie," it—_he_—protests. "This is Belle. _The _Belle. Beauty and the Beast?"

Archie's eyes flicker to hers. He does not smile. His mouth pulls down at the corners and his eyes are brisk wind. Quickly—_guilt, _a hawker always knows—he looks away again. "You mean she looks like you imagined Belle? From your book?"

The queen's boy flattens him a stare. Haughty, regal, a child-goblin used to finding legions at his command. "_Archie_, I think Belle's ready for Operation Cobra."

Once upon a time, the queen killed her own lover with a cobra in a box.

Belle does not have her back to the trees. Her back is to the still-open door of Archie's office. The queen's boy stands between her and the chill March air outside.

If she will flee, she must _fight_.

"What do you want?" she keeps her voice level, but they both startle at her venom.

See, she has cobras, too. Hawkers always do.

The monster child's eyes are far older than he is. The pupils run deeper than dwarf mines and sorrow. And though Archie keeps a hand on his shoulder, the monster child shrugs it free, cracks open his book.

He comes close—and suddenly, there she is.

On the page.

She wears a yellow dress, her back to the open, hair tumbling down her shoulders in ringlets and curls. The man they called a beast then stands at her side. He is hardly taller, but his hand fills the curve between her breast and her hip. He wears a coat of dragon hide, his body angled already towards the door. Showmanship, she knows now. A magician is always ready for a swift exit.

The queen's boy turns the page, and there Belle is again, with curtains.

Again, with spells.

Again, with Hatter.

Again, with mobs and magic and fires. With their phoenix, soaring, burning, scattering its ashes between the trees, never to rise—one last funeral pyre, one last elegy.

Belle tears the book from his hands and _flings_ it away.

"Rose—" Archie blurts and starts forward. Belle doesn't see him, can't hear him. There is only the ocean, and this monster child blocking her escape.

"_Who sent you_?" she snarls.

The queen's boy backs up a step, bumps into Archie. And Archie puts an arm around him, means to push him back, but goblins are hard to move. The beast recovers quickly. He darts out and down for his book, and soon, his coal black eyes return to her.

"It's okay. We're the _good guys_. But you—Belle, this is so important—you have to find Mr. Gold. Emma coming here was the first key to breaking the curse, but you're the second and—"

She feels herself shaking only by the chattering in the waves.

"No. _No_."

"Henry—" Archie tries again, but crickets are never especially loud.

Goblins eat crickets. Goblins eat _everything. _And the boy beast is still smiling, flat-toothed and hungry.

He says, "Look, I know it's a lot to take in, and okay, he did hurt your dad. But he had a reason! He thought your father locked you up. Well, actually, I'm pretty sure he thought you were dead, but he's your true love. You should—"

"What do you know about it?" she shouts. She wants a whirlwind. She wants a flame. She wants her firebird back again. Belle bears her teeth, grabs the child-beast by the collar and hisses low, "You tell the queen to _go fuck herself_."

Archie is already moving to separate them, his hands on Belle's, though she has let the boy go. And he stops. He stops and stares at her, open mouthed.

"Rose," voice low, urgent, "who do you mean, _the queen?"_

"See, I told you!" the boy monster crows. "I told you she remembers. Belle, you remember Fairytale Land!"

Fairytales? _Fairytales_? And the goblin's eyes glitter. He wants this. He _taints_ this. How dare he reach inside and touch parts of her that hurt the most? How dare he take them, _eat them, _steal them for his own?

And what did his mother make him from, Belle wonders. When she created him, did she do it with mud and stone? With bile and toadskin and hate? How did she make this golem child, this monstrous beast?

"Fairytales?" her voice barely croaks. It rattles like a bitter peach pit in her throat. Her fingers clench so tight into fists that half-moons carve into her palms. "There's no such _thing_."

Once upon a time, Belle watched a phoenix die.

She turns her back, though everything in her body screams to keep to the trees. Let them have her weakness. Let them take her, if they can.

She shoves the door open. Venetian blinds break beneath her hands.

Belle strides out, into the street and away.

* * *

><p>When she gets home, she finds forget-me-nots and lavender waiting for her on her doorstep.<p>

For remembrance. And distrust.

No note, but the flowers say enough.

Belle takes them inside. She kicks her shoes off at the kitchen door, lays the flowers on the table and means to put the kettle on. But somehow, somewhere along the way, she crumples. Her back to the cabinets, she slumps on the kitchen floor with her arms tight around her ankles, and tries to remember how to breathe.

Once upon a time, she used to be so brave. But how can she do this? How can she do this anymore? She is a broken clown, a wind-up tin soldier with a craven heart. She is _damaged. _She is wrong. She forgets what it's like to know her own name.

Belle. Mary Ann. Alice. Rose.

Sophie. Magrat. Hermione. Perdita.

Medea. Willow. Morgana. Moss.

Agnes. Gytha. Sycorax. Sybel.

_Who?_

Belle curls on the tile and sobs. Her father's watch is not near heavy enough.

And hours later, when Hatter and her father come home, she is still there. Hatter pulls her up, into his chest, and he carries her up the stairs to their room. He holds her. He holds her. Because he is real. Because he is here. Because he is still _him_, though he has worn as many names and faces as any man can hold.

He holds her and rocks, but he doesn't say anything because there is nothing to say.

* * *

><p>That night, Belle wakes from lonely dark to lonely dark. She reaches out a hand, gropes the mattress to either side, but somehow she has fallen into the divot in the middle and Hatter is not here.<p>

Blindly, she stabs in the dark until the bedside lamp flickers on. Finding her slippers, she pads into the hall. But the bathroom light is dark. The whole house is dark.

Hatter isn't here.

With the practice of a thousand quick exits, Belle dresses swift and silent in the middling dark. In under five minutes, she stands in the street under a waning moon.

And the van is still parked out front, so Belle ignores it. She turns like a child with her arms out wide until she catches the scent of Hatter's magic and sets off after it, following where it leads. This is an old game, an old desperation, breaking mobs apart to reconvene later.

Belle always could follow him by the scent of his spells in the dark.

As far as these things go, it's not hard. Belle pulls her father's borrowed coat tighter around her shoulders. She stoops her head against the high March wind and follows. She _hunts_.

Just past the boarded-up library, she spots Hatter skipping around the corner. He sees her. His face lights. He catches her around the waist, lifts her up and spins until they're dizzy. Until, laughing, he must set her down again or bloody them both against the sharp corner of a looming post office box.

When she catches her breath, Belle grins at him through the streetlights. "And where were you tonight, _Jefferson_?"

Hatter laughs. "Child's play," he says and pulls a domino out of his pocket to drop into her hand.

Six dots, three dots. Belle turns it over, but the little hunk of ivory remains unchanged.

"I don't understand."

When Hatter smiles, his teeth catch the streetlights.

"Hunting jabberwocks, my dear."

* * *

><p>As Belle brushes her teeth over the sink with sunlight streaming over her shoulder, Hatter creeps up behind her and drops a battered lavender top hat on her head. She spits out suds, rinses her mouth and cannot stop smiling.<p>

She murmurs, "Look at this old thing."

When Belle takes it off and turns it over, the top lid falls open, the little hinge and clasp that should have held it long rusted through. But the other compartments lift and close just as they're supposed to. She even finds, deep inside the secret of a secret, an ancient little vial marked: _Mushrooms (left, right, up)._

Belle closes it all up back again and pulls the musty, fraying thing back over her ears.

"Where did you possibly find this?" she asks, half laughing.

And it must be a good morning because Hatter isn't glossy, not at all.

He grins. "Pawnshop. Maybe it's a dragon, not a jabberwock. Your beast's got quite the hoard."

Archie would want her to be worried. But then, there's so much of so many worlds that Archie has never seen.

Belle chooses to be happy. She is wearing Hatter's old top hat—and that means they're neither of them insane. So today, she picks a lavender sundress to match her history. And her father smiles when he sees her padding down the stairs at Hatter's side.

"You're looking quite dapper this morning, my dear," he greets, eyes warm over his coffee.

And Belle smiles, because one day, her father will know Mary Anne. He will know Alice and Sybel, Magrat and Willow. One day, she will tell him what it felt like to fly on the back of a phoenix. One day, she will show him a spell.

One day, she'll be better.

But today, Hatter grins. His gray eyes are bright with sunlight. "Just like old times," he says and offers her his elbow.

Comfort in an old, resumed routine, Belle smiles and takes his arm.

"Yes," she says. "Old times, indeed, m'lord."

And because it is Tuesday, because she is alright, because she is Belle and Rose and everyone else, they all go to the shop together, her and Hatter and her father, hand in arm in hand.

* * *

><p>When Gold slams open the door to the shop an hour later, singed and vicious, Belle jumps, but thinks she should not be surprised. Nor is she surprised to watch as he flings three broken dominos to the ground at Hatter's feet.<p>

He is throwing the gauntlet, Belle understands.

"Think yourself a wizard, boy," Gold snarls, all sharpened teeth and nasty spells. "Taking_ party tricks _to a dragon's den?"

Magic seethes around him. Her father flinches at her side, but Belle barely notices. She's picking out the sneaky spells arching over his fingers—the kinds that turn ex-lovers into roses, that spin _nooses _out of gold—and Belle doesn't think.

She can't do this anymore.

She _won't._

With a wild blast, she shouts a word older than the world, and shoves Rumpelstiltskin back with a party trick of her own. A whistle for the wind and a single instant later, Belle plants herself in front of Hatter. And her whole body screams, _no!_

"You leave him alone," she snarls, bristling and aching and the spells could tear her apart, except, once upon a time, she spoke with dragons. She tamed these words. "Rumpelstiltskin, you turn around and _walk away._"

For the barest edge of a second, Gold's eyes soften. He looks at her in _pride_, the bastard. But then his gaze catches on the hat she wears, and suddenly, his face is a warpath made of ice.

"A family of thieves, it seems." He smiles, all teeth. "I should have known."

And this is _too fucking much._

Something snaps—deep in her dungeons, in the pit of her heart—and Belle goes up in flames.

Fire seethes around her head, down her arms, through her eyes and fingers. She stands in the middle of her father's flower shop with teeth bared, with wings of blistering heat. And Hatter reaches for her hand, but she does not take it.

Belle steps forward and forces Rumpelstiltskin back instead.

"You're the only thief," she says and her voice is mountain-even. The peach pit has burned to ash. "I won't let you come in here, in my _father's business, _and calls us thieves after what _you_ _did_."

Three decades have passed since she read the stories of this particular monster's face, but Belle thinks she sees fury there, shock, and despite himself, she knows Rumpelstiltskin is intrigued.

He smiles, though even from this distance, her heat chars the edges of his silk tie.

"Oh, and pray tell what was _that_, dearie?"

Too much. _Too much._ Belle _breaks_. She blasts him backwards with a gout of flame he barely blocks in time.

She screams, "You_ sold us _to the_ Queen! _You son of a bitch, _you sold us!"_

And as Rumpelstiltskin staggers through the glass double doors, he has the gall to look _shocked_.

"_What_?"

But Belle is _gone_. She forces him back by striding forward. Flames lick at her jaw with every inhaled breath. Her hair tangles into a halo of living thorns and somewhere behind her, Hatter's hat falls to the floor.

"_What? _What do you mean _what?" _her voice cracks the siding. The ground trembles beneath her feet. Too many dragon words, too old, not meant for everyday speech.

And they are on the street now, Gold with his back to a car—his car—and here and there, people peer out of their windows to watch.

"We were _careful_!" she shouts. The clock tower chimes the hour, though the hour is new and wrong. "Never the same town for more than a night. Never a show in decent light. New faces, new names, new clothes at least once a week. She _couldn't _have found us. Not without _help, _you bastard. Not without _you!_"

Pain scores the lines of Gold's face. He looks as though he is struggling to breathe, his broken arm fisted into his stomach.

Belle tells herself it is the heat. Because it cannot be regret. It cannot be.

"You think I…?" His eyes—human, though he is not human—say, _no_, _please no. _Helooks as though another blow will shatter him. "Belle, I would _never_."

"Really. You would never?" He is lying. He is lying because he _must be lying, _and Belle smiles. She forces her lips away from her teeth, and she can see her grin reflected back in the tinted windows of the car he leans against. It is the smile of a woman who fights _beside_ dragons. "Then how is it you had Hatter's old top hat? He wore it the day we were taken."

Gold shakes his head. He coughs, though there is no smoke. Only heat—heat enough to sear two footprints into the sidewalk upon which she stands.

"I won it in deal—" he starts.

Belle snaps, "Oh, I'll bet you did," and lifts a hand. She means to strike him, to burn that godawful _grief _clean off.

She hears her father shouting. She hears Hatter calling her name. She hears the stuttering rabbit-fast heartbeats of all the people up and down the street.

She hears nothing at all.

She hears only the man in front of her, pleading.

"Belle," he licks his lips, choosing his words like jacks. "I would never see you come to any harm. You _know_ that. Whatever the queen did to you, you _must_ know that."

A spell he meant to cast dies and droops from his fingers. Instead of boiling outward, his magic coils away from him like steam, twines into her flames. And Belle burns. She _burns. _

"So were you in it to kill Hatter, then?" she demands. "Because I know you watched us. I felt your eyes in _every town."_

"Not mine, you didn't." Gold pushes off the car. Despite the heat, he limps forward. Maybe to touch her. Maybe to lead her through another door like the men who grab her shoulders. "I was told you _died. _Threw yourself off the tower in which your father imprisoned you. You want to know why I came after him the way I did? _That's why_. Because I thought he'd _killed you."_

Belle does not move. She stands with her shoulders thrown back and stares him down as her flames catch on the sleeves of his coat. He smothers them without a thought. Again and again, even as his gray pinstripes blacken and flake away. And Belle used to know the way he looked when he lied. By those old tells, this new story sounds like truth.

But who knows now, with his human face, his suits and his limp? His whole _body_ is a lie.

"Who told you?" she asks him. It is a simple question.

"Belle—"

"_Who told you?" _It is the _only _question.

Gold cannot meet her eyes. He turns his head away. "The Queen."

A truth.

"You stay the hell away from me," she snarls. And he protests. From the sidewalk, he protests.

But Belle turns her back on him—let him kill her if he can—and returns to Hatter's side.


	8. Sideways, Through a Mirror

vargen23 prompted: dragons' blood and tea

* * *

><p><strong>Sideways, Through a Mirror<strong>

* * *

><p>For some time, Gold leaves her mostly alone, though Belle still finds flowers on her doorstep. Gladiolus in admiration of strength. Hydrangeas for apology. Hydrangeas from so many different bushes, Belle begins to wonder if Gold isn't wandering the town, sneaking into other people's gardens in the night.<p>

He used to, she knows. Once upon a time, he brought her water lilies from the Frog King's pond. He filled their dinner table with spiky protea from the mouths of dragon's dens and carried her anemones from the bottom of the sea in a little glass bowl just big enough to hold with both hands.

Now he brings her hydrangeas, stolen from his neighbors.

Belle ignores everything that turns up on her stoop. Until, one day, he leaves her daffodils. Because they are her favorite.

This bouquet, she sets on fire and nails to the door of his shop.

After that, the flowers stop coming.

* * *

><p>Weeks pass. Archie calls. And Archie calls. And Archie calls. Sometimes worried, sometimes stern, but Belle never answers. She hears the whispers as she walks down the street. People don't know what to make of her now. Magic is impossible, but she is magic, and they saw fire. They saw Mr. Gold—the man they all fear—cornered against his own car. They saw his sleeves char black.<p>

So the phone rings and Belle ignores it, and days pass without a blip.

Then, one morning, as Belle sits crosslegged in the window of the shop, setting up the new week's Easter display, Alice skips inside. The little girl looks different without her party frock and harried braid, but her wide, wicked grin and the mostly invisible rabbit that follows along behind her is much unchanged.

Belle cannot help but return that smile. As the little girl's mother walks up to the front counter to speak with Moe, Belle waves her over.

Her father glances her way, smiles fast and grateful. He is utterly smitten with the widow, and children make awkward attempts at flirting even more difficult.

"Morning, Mrs. Hargreaves," he begins and Alice skips over.

The poor thing is practically squashed under the weight of all the books in her clear plastic backpack. As she sets it down on the floor beside the window ledge, Belle catches a few titles. The Secret Garden. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. The Rats of Nimh.

_I want a daughter, _she thinks again, without meaning to. _I want a little girl, just like you._

Instead, she says, "Hello," and smiles a secret. "Do you want to come in?"

From the counter, Alice's mother says to Moe, "I'm here for Mr. Gold, actually. Such a weird man. I never know where I stand with him. But he'll give me an extension on my rent as long as I come here today—and it had to be today—to place this order. He said to call it a peace offering."

Alice shakes her head at her mother's fluttering eyes, then smiles at Belle. She is so much older than she seems—and then, suddenly, she is not. She says, "Yes. Very much and thank you."

Climbing up into the window beside her takes some doing, but with a little help, Alice manages. She plops down and grins, stretches out her feet between the flowers. "We're on our way to school. _Yuck_. I'm glad Mr. Gold made us come here first."

Carefully, Belle keeps her face steady and unconcerned. She threads a tulip with wire and eases it into the brick of florist foam glued down in the belly of the basket. "Mr. Gold made you come here?"

At the counter, Mrs. Hargreaves laughs and leans in. "I haven't the faintest," Belle hears distantly. "Personally, I think your girl knocked the sense out of him. And a good job, too. Someone needed to."

Briefly, Alice glances backwards at her mother before she nods. "My mama hates him, but I think he's okay. He gave me a peppermint once." She doesn't seem bothered at all, as if old dragons with sweeties are par for the course. Alice leans in, touching a tulip's sleek bud. "What're you doing up here?"

"Making the Easter displays." Carefully, Belle scoops a chunk of sod and tiny purple flowers into the belly of a tender green basket. She glances up at Alice and offers the girl a smile. "Would you like to help?"

"If I get dirty before school, Mama will scold. And Bit. They're just the same." She screws up her face. "_Fussy."_

Belle grins. She leans in and whispers, "When I was a little girl, before I knew magic, I had a tutor just like that. Smelly old bird never let me have any fun."

Alice's eyes flare wide and bright. "You too?" she asks, as though this is a revelation. "What'd you do?"

"Well, I ran away a lot. I was very good at hiding in trees." Belle presses down another smile, tries hard to look stern. "But I don't think you should do that."

Alice sighs. "No. Bit would _fuss._"

"Well, here," she says and smiles—whenever has she smiled so often before? She picks a tiny purple flower from where its lack will not be noticed. "For Bit. He can eat this. It's just a dog violet."

"Oh! Thank you." So gingerly, Alice accepts the flower with utter concentration and the gravity of a ceremony, as though she is not often given presents for the friend that no one else can see.

Turning, she offers it to the vested rabbit at her side. He reaches out, takes the flower carefully between long and gnarled claws. Immediately, the little purple bloom goes hazy.

Bit gives it a nibble, twitches his nose and gobbles it down.

When he looks up hopefully, Alice crosses her arms. "No, you say _thank you_."

The rabbit scrunches up its nose and sweeps a bow, bending down so low his ears sweep a pattern in the pollen strewn across the tile floor. And Belle laughs, abruptly and without quite meaning to. The awkward, birdy sound of it startles Alice into laughing, too.

Immediately, Belle covers her mouth with a hand, but Alice dissolves again into giggles, and she remembers it's alright to laugh—even at a mostly invisible rabbit. With a child here, she can laugh and it doesn't matter what at, or if no one else can see it. Because she's made a friend.

And at the counter, both Mrs. Hargreaves and her father look around at them, their faces torn in identical expressions of love and wistful wonder.

Belle knows the eyes of a worried parent. She thinks perhaps Alice doesn't laugh nearly as much as she should, either.

"Would he like another?" she asks, reaching for the unsorted pile of flowers. But Alice shakes her head.

"He's on a diet today. Otherwise he won't fit into his waistcoats. That happened last spring. He went around bare chested like _a wild hopper_." She whispers the last as if scandalized. Belle looks, and she thinks she can see the rabbit blush.

Her father asks Mrs. Hargreaves something in lower tones. The woman nods, chews a lip, turns her head aside. Flowers are chosen at random, cards and greetings dropped inside. Their eyes keep touching, slipping away, then aching for the loss.

"Well, Bit looks quite dapper today," Belle says. "I don't think another flower will hurt him much. They're so small."

Alice shakes her head. She finds a daisy lost in the box of grass and twirls it between her fingers.

"But they're like candy," she says. "And he eats when he's stressed. He's meant to have dandelions and grass."

Belle snorts. "Seems a bit bland."

Beside them, Bit nods emphatically. Again, Belle laughs.

Alice smiles. But then, she cocks her head and asks, "Who's that man in the doorway there?"

"My papa, probably," Belle says. She finishes threading a daffodil with wire and turns to look.

Hatter stands in the doorway to the back room. Wide eyed and stricken, he stands with legs locked, frozen in the doorframe. The look on his face speaks of pain.

"Oh, that's Hatter."

"Your friend, Hatter?" Alice asks.

"Yes." Belle frowns. Hatter didn't seem glossy this morning, but he's acting strangely now. "He's called Jefferson here, though. We save _Hatter _for secrets and the underneath of picnic tables. Would you like to meet him?"

"Okay!"

And Belle tries to wave him over, but he doesn't seem to notice. His eyes are on Alice, and only on Alice, but when the little girl smiles and waves at him, he jerks into motion like a broken wind-up toy, scrambling backwards and away, back into the sorting room.

At the desk, neither Alice's mother nor Belle's father notice Hatter's abrupt disappearance.

"Oh." The little girl's face falls. "He doesn't like strangers either?"

"Usually he's the best with strangers." Belle leans towards the glass to check the street outside. Maybe the queen has found them, she thinks.

But no, if the queen were here, they'd fight together. They'd raze the whole block down. And in any case, the street is empty, save for an old woman walking her cocker spaniel.

"I don't know what's wrong," she says.

At the counter, Alice's mother pulls herself away from awkward flirting long enough to say, "Well, I guess that's about it, then. I'll um… I'll see you soon." She blushes and turns, pats her hair into place although it hasn't moved. "Come on, Gracie. Time to go."

Belle arches an eyebrow.

"Gracie?" she asks.

Alice flashes a sneaky smile and ducks her head. "I lied." She darts in, cups her hands to Belle's ear and whispers. "If you see me tomorrow, I'll be Bruce. _Shh._"

And then she's off, out of the window with Bit at her heels and a sack full of books dragging behind her. Alice's—Gracie's—mother smiles at Belle and shrugs. Her eyes are genuinely warm as she waves goodbye. She seems grateful, strangely enough. Hopeful.

Belle returns her smile and her wave. Only then does Mrs. Hargreaves follow her daughter out into the street.

Odd, she thinks, but then something crashes in the back room and abruptly, she forgets about it. She rises, leaps off the window just as her father starts, sets down the piece of paper in his hand.

Belle shakes her head. "Let me get him, papa."

Moe nods. "Be careful, dear," he says.

This, too, strikes Belle as odd, but she doesn't stop to think.

She slips into the back room, to find Hatter standing over the fallen coatrack with his shoulders tight and bent. Plaster dusts his clenched and shaking hands. She thinks he must have torn the hooks right out of the wall.

"Hatter?" Belle ventures.

When he turns to her, he's shaking from head to foot. Twin tear tracks streak his face.

"That's my daughter," he whispers. "That's my little girl."

* * *

><p>Belle does for him the best she can, but Hatter is a wild wreck and he will not be soothed. She thinks she should call Archie, maybe, and waits hopefully for the phone to ring. But Archie hasn't called in days, and anyway, that would be the worst kind of betrayal.<p>

Some secrets—the secrets that come with names—can never be shared.

So Belle offers Hatter pills at the intervals the bottle suggests. She keeps him well glossy, and makes him eat. She rubs his shoulder, though he does not cry again. He simply sits, and stares, and occasionally he whispers, "_my baby girl_," and "I want that bastard _dead_."

And Belle doesn't know what he heard from the back room, but Mrs. Hargreaves called it a _peace offering_. Said she'd been sent by Gold. And it's strange, it's odd. It hurts in a way Belle didn't know she _could. _But somehow, it… makes sense.

Because all the flowers in the world wouldn't begin to sketch the first lines of an apology in the air. But a daughter—Hatter's daughter… _Peace, _after hunting jabberwocks and scorching the sidewalk with flame…

Belle sits with Hatter. She does not leave his side. She holds his hand, and whispers stories the swamp dragons told them, once upon a time.

And she can't help thinking—_hoping_—that Gold meant what his messenger said.

* * *

><p>When finally, finally, sleep catches Hatter upside his aching head, Belle sneaks downstairs. She finds the slip of paper full of numbers on the coffee table, and squints at her father's messy hand. <em>Home, <em>says one set of numbers. Another, _shop_. Another, _mobile. _

Belle picks the last set—because whatever a mobile is, apparently it always reaches Gold—and carefully, she works the buttons on the phone.

The slight plastic bowl with its many holes trills in her ear. Then again. And again. It trills so long that Belle hangs up, and dials the number again. This time, on the fourth trill, something clicks and something thuds, and Gold's groggy, grumpy voice snarls, "_What?"_

Belle decides she likes phones. Because on the other end of this, there is a monster who destroyed an entire world. But on the phone he sounds small and sleepy, a little boy woken up long after he should have been abed.

She says, "I want to talk. May I come see you?"

Something thuds again. Belle hears Gold swear from far away, scrambling, and then his voice is near again. "_Belle_?"

It sounds like a question, like peach pits that have yet to burn. Belle sits down on the edge of the couch and says, "Yes."

"And you want to…? Of course, yes. Always," he breathes, as if he cannot. As if air is precious and he is dreaming somewhere undersea. "You're always welcome. _Always._"

A pause, and then he adds, "But—you do realize it's one in the morning?"

Belle smiles, because in the dark room there is no one to see it. "Yes."

Gently, Gold ventures, "Usually, people are abed this hour, dearie."

"Hatter is abed," she says. "Thus the hour."

"Ah." He does his best, but his voice still darkens. "I see. Well, then. You have my home address?"

She does not. So Gold gives it to her, painstakingly careful, as if he is afraid she will get lost. He recites his address twice, tells her again and again the landmarks she will need to find, though his voice keeps going muddled and strangely deep, as though he is breaking, or cannot quite figure out whether he is sleeping or awake.

When, at last, Belle laughs at him and tells him, "Stop. If I don't find it now, it isn't meant to be," on the other end, she hears him swallow.

He murmurs, "Belle. Can we call a truce?"

Sitting on the transfigured, reupholstered remnants of her dead mother's favorite couch, she considers this. She remembers the scent of her mother's perfume, and the way her eyes laughed when she should have been cross.

Belle nods, though there is no one here to see it. "For tonight."

"Of course," he agrees. "For tonight." Then, so gently, "I love you."

"I will take twenty minutes," Belle says.

And then, just as gently, she hangs up the phone.

* * *

><p>When Gold answers the door, he is dressed. Belle had half expected he would have gone back to bed, decided her a dream and come out later to answer the door in his bedclothes or a robe. But, Gold looks as expensive as always, of course, if a little frayed. His eyes roam her face, but never leave.<p>

"You came." It sounds so much like _thank you_ that something behind Belle's breastbone goes soft.

"May I come in?" she says.

"Of course. Sorry, I—" he cuts himself off and steps back, gestures to the warm-lit all behind him with as much of a bow as he can manage with his leg. "I made tea," he offers.

Belle tries a smile—something small. "Thank you."

Inside, his house is nothing like the Dark Castle used to be. The floors are warm wood, the walls something close to the rose he left on her stoop. At her shoulder, when Belle drapes her coat on the rack next to his, the hall light plays on the colored glass of his doors, and despite the clutter of two worlds sprawled between these rooms, it strikes Belle that this is the sort of house to raise a child in.

So many windows full of so many colors. In daylight, Gold must live in rainbows.

One day, she thinks, she'd like a house like this.

Gold limps into the kitchen, ginger with his broken ribs and his bad knee. Belle follows. She watches and waits until he pours two cups of tea before saying, "Thank you for Hatter's daughter." And then, "What are your intentions?"

Gold stops. Carefully, he sets the kettle back down, half-turns his head her way.

"My intentions? She's _seven."_

Belle stands her ground. She holds her shoulders high and even in the doorway, like a dragon hunter gone to war.

"Yes. And if you try to use her against Hatter, I will kill you. I know I'm not as strong as you, Rumpelstiltskin, but I am brave," she says, and an instant later, Belle realizes it's true. It's _true,_ and it's like breathing again. "I _am_ brave. And if you hurt him, I will not stop until you're dead."

He glances at her sideways, gathers up the two mugs in his unbroken arm and limps heavily to the table, this time without his cane.

"It was a peace offering," he says, and will not look at her. "Whatever you must think of me, I'd never harm a child."

His eyes dart away like minnows in shallow water. A truth. He has always been uncomfortable with truths.

Belle nods. She sits down and accepts her tea. His kitchen table is not at all what she expected. It would never grace a dining hall, or even a family home. Small, circular, with one crooked leg—this is the table of an empty house, and a lonely, broken man.

And he… he was a man once, wasn't he?

"Hatter thinks you're working for the queen," she says.

Gold breathes through his nose, out through his mouth. She wonders if he has been to see Archie, too. It doesn't seem to help him, either. He rubs his eyes as though he is in pain.

"Why Hatter?" he asks. "Out of anyone you could have found. Why not the dwarves, Belle? You seemed to get on well enough with them."

Belle cradles her mug in her hands, tastes the steam on the pad of her tongue in search of poisons. There are rules on the road that can never be forgotten. Always give a stranger food, but never accept blindly what you are given. She waits until Gold takes a sip from his before she tastes her own.

"I knew you were watching me," she says.

His eyes slip away. He shifts. His knee brushes hers beneath the table and Gold startles, though he hides it well. He pulls away, arranges himself so that she no longer feels his heat against her skin, though she sees his fingers pressing too tight against the edges of his cup. He coughs, though lightly, nothing to jar his ribs.

"Do you remember Sirle?"

"That was the… the city full of ginger princes, was it not? I remember meeting old King Coren. He was sweet. And absolutely crawling with grandchildren." Belle wants to laugh, but it sticks and flutters in her throat.

She thinks maybe her ashy peach pit is growing into a tree.

But Gold says nothing, and when finally she looks up, Belle finds his eyes on her, taking tally of her face, noting every line and curve.

"He introduced you to the crowd as his wife," he whispers at last and his dark eyes dart away. "I went home after that. Drank myself stupid."

"Oh."

For a long moment, it is all Belle can think to say. At last, at length, she sighs and runs her fingers through her hair. "We… no, we were never married, Rumpelstiltskin. Nor do we ever want to be. It was part of our act. Sometimes, I was Madam Sorceress, and he the apprentice. Other times, we'd switch. Or we'd be married. Brother and sister. Cousins, once. Enemies, another."

His lips twitch. Slowly, he shakes his head and stares down into his tea.

"Then I'm afraid I've spent the last thirty years of my life a truly foolish old man."

Belle smiles at him over her tea—chamomile, two sugars, the way she's always taken it—and awkward, coltish, Gold smiles back.

From there, things are easier. For the first time in thirty years, they take the first tentative steps towards friendship again.

* * *

><p>Belle doesn't sleep. She returns home three hours later with her head abuzz and static leaping from her fingers. So, instead, as quietly as she can, she cleans the kitchen. She sorts the messy den, takes the list of Gold's numbers and slides it in her father's little black book with all the others.<p>

The sun has not yet begun to sink its fingers into the clouds, but Belle makes breakfast just the same. When Hatter comes down at six, he glares at the pancakes she offers him through bleary eyes. He wears his lavender top hat, though the buttons of his shirt are as of yet undone and his skinny silver belt buckle dances when he walks.

"Where were you?" he demands, unmoving in the door.

Belle sees no point in lying. The damage, such as it is, has hours since been done. "I went to see Mr. Gold."

Hatter smiles, and though he is not glossy, it does not reach his eyes.

"Did you kill him?"

"I thankedhim."

She sets the pancakes on the table—a table meant to house a family—because it's obvious Hatter will not take them. His mouth twists in ugly ways she hasn't seen in years. "For _what_?"

"For your _daughter_, Jefferson," Belle snaps. "You could have gone years without knowing."

"Yeah?" he swallows, glances over her shoulder, back to her, then past her, unseeing. "And what good does knowing do me, eh? Because that bastard knows just how to get at me now. He's probably watching us through the damn mirrors."

"He's not and you know it," she says before he can prowl around the house breaking glass again. "Sit down and eat."

Now, finally, Hatter staggers into the kitchen.

"Eat?" he demands. "_Eat? _Your frumious wizard has my baby girl, Belle—and now, apparently, he has you. You tell me how in the _uffish hell _I'm supposed to _sit down_ and _eat_?"

Belle stares him down. She is not afraid. "Bend at the hip, again at the knee. I find that usually helps."

"_Belle_."

"No, you're being ridiculous."

"I don't want you near him," he says. He shakes his head, his eyes bright and too-clear. "You don't understand, Belle, I'll not let him have you."

And though she loves Hatter, abruptly, her patience breaks. She flings her spatula down into the sink and rounds on him, teeth unhappily bared.

"No one _has me, _Hatter. I am my own woman and _I_ choose my fate."

Hatter barks a laugh in her face. "Like you chose him in the first place, yeah? Like you chose to be captured by the queen because you learned a little magic, because she thought she could use us against him? You chose that? Oh, dearie me, I must have missed _that _contract. When did _I_ sign up?"

"No. No, Hatter, I saved my village when I went with him. I made the right choice that day."

"Did you _have_ a choice? You went to your _death_ that day. How kind of the monster not to _rape _you. How _generous _he left you alive."

They circle each other over the kitchen table, both of them fisting spells they can't quite seem to grasp. In the plastic rack of drying dishes, a forgotten dishtowel turns into a sleeping dove. In the garbage, the remnants of a pumpkin pie become a smashed and battered match-box truck.

"You don't know him," Belle says. She keeps her shoulders very straight, as though, if she faces Hatter as she did the ogres, this problem will go away.

But he says, "Neither do _you,_" and laughs. "He got roaring drunk and _lost an entire kingdom_. Belle, he _made this fucking curse we're trapped in_."

"This is the queen's curse!" she shouts and Hatter clicks his fingers, slams his hands down onto the table.

_"Exactly. _But you listen to the spells sing and tell me he wasn't the one to make it."

Belle breathes like Archie told her, but it _never_ seems to help. She wants to throw things. Heavy things. She wants to aim them straight at Hatter's face.

"So he made it." She shrugs with an effort, glares at him a challenge. "He's a _whore_, Hatter, he'll make for anyone if the payment's right. And who are you to talk, anyway? The Queen of Hearts _owns your head."_

Hatter goes very still, suddenly, on the opposite side of the table. His doggish face darkens. His fingers catch in the rungs of a chair and go nearly blue around the knuckles. Belle can count every vein from where she stands.

"Shut up," he says. "That's different."

There is a reason they do not speak of names. The reason is here, today, burning in the lines of history and agony between them. Belle bears her teeth.

"Is it different?" she presses. "You _lost_ your _daughter_."

"_Shut up_."

"You lost your daughter because _you _couldn't keep your fingers out of the damn pies. That was _you_, Hatter. That was _always_ _you_."

Hatter shoves the chair over. He reaches out and swipes the plate of pancakes off the table. It shatters to the ground, far more than chipped, but Belle doesn't turn her head to look. She stares Hatter in his cold diamond eyes, even as he snarls, "Don't you talk about my girl. Don't you _dare_."

Hatter will not hurt her, because he is frightened and today, Belle is brave.

"Do you even _know _that woman she was with today? Is that her mother? Because I'll bet a dime to the dozen it isn't. She's a lost child, Hatter—she's a _lost child_ because of _what you did."_

_"Don't you fucking dare!" _he bellows, slams his hands again onto the table. "I did what I had to. I was the_ only thing _she had. I made sure she'd be _safe_. I kept her out of it."

"Oh, don't act so fucking noble. The queen pointed _and you killed."_

"I had no choice! I was _apprenticed_!"

"Everyone _always _has a choice. And you knew that wasn't the right one—you _knew it,_ Hatter—but you still—"

"You want to talk about blame, mutton? Is that what this is? Because Rumpelstiltskin's working for the queen and you know it, Belle. You bloody well know it, but you're still going to crawl in his bed—"

"I went to _thank him_."

"Oh, yes, thank you for the flowers, _dear. _Thank you for stealing my Hatter's daughter. _Thank you for the uffish dagger in my back."_

Belle crosses her hands over her chest. She will not shake. _She will not._

"Hatter," she bites. "Stop."

"Why?" He spreads his arms and laughs, sauntering around the table towards her. "What the fuck does it matter anymore, _huh_? The queen knows we're here. You saw to that, lighting up like a damned _myth _in the middle of the town. What's it matter if we're quiet? Damn it, Belle, we've been quiet for _thirty years _and I'm done_. _I want to_ burn her down!"_

"_Shut up!" _Belle shouts. She shoves him, their faces barely inches apart, slams her fists like grief into his chest. "You shut up, Hatter! You shut up right now, or so help me I will _break_ you! What the hell do you know anyway? I loved him. _I loved him!"_

And Hatter quiets. He stills and stands and lets her strike him, though pain streaks his face.

When finally she stops, he still says nothing. She has asked him to shut up.

But his face creases in something like sympathy, something like a knife twisting in her gut. He mouths, "_Loved_."

Belle turns away. She rights the chair and sits down at the kitchen table, ignoring the mess he's made of their breakfast.

"Fuck you, Hatter," she says, and though her heart is in it, the venom is gone. "Loved, yes. As in _lost_. As in _no longer_. But I kissed him and his curse receded. That means it's true love. It _has_ to be true love."

Another chair scrapes against the checkered tile as Hatter pulls it back. He sits next to her, sighs, takes off his hat and turns it over in his hands. For a long while, they sit together in their silence. Belle hears a door ease gently shut again upstairs. They've woken her father, but he won't come down as long as no spells are cast.

New house rules. No firebirds on the good carpet.

"I never understood true love," Hatter says at last. "Maybe you truly loved him then. Maybe that's what it took. Maybe if you kissed him tomorrow, nothing would happen."

Belle does not look up. "I don't think he's evil."

She feels Hatter's shrug. "If nothing else, he battered your father all to hell, mutton."

"I didn't say I thought he was _good. _And anyway…" Belle smiles suddenly, something small and sneaky. "I broke his face for that. His… you know, his teeth. His arm. I was brave."

"Yes." Hatter smiles at her and reaches across the table. In old habit, their fingers twine together. "You've always had the fortitude of a gryphon, m'dear."

* * *

><p>The argument ends entirely too easily. And Belle should suspect. She knows better—she knows <em>Hatter<em>—but her head is awhirl with curses and queens and she doesn't think. Or rather, she thinks—about Gold, about the coming war, about the price on their heads, about true love and kindness and evil and the magic on her fingers—but not about the right things at all.

And so, it is not for another few hours later, when Belle looks up from the book she hasn't been reading, that she thinks to wonder where Hatter has gone.

Slowly, Belle puts her book aside and stands. Her bones ache. She is fifty-eight years old. At the same time, she is not yet thirty.

"Hatter?" she calls down the stairs.

"Oh, you just missed him, sweetheart," her father calls back up. "He left about an hour ago. Took the van. What'd you need?"

_No_, Belle thinks. _Oh, no._

She flies down the steps, barely stops long enough to put on her shoes, to call over her shoulder, "Hatter's doing something stupid. If I'm not back by nightfall, Papa, give me up for lost."

"What?" he starts and stands. "Belle, _wait_!"

But she's already out the door, flying down the streets and many turns to Gold's pawn shop. The walk is thirty minutes. At a dead run, it turns out to be fifteen.

But she's already missed him. The shop is unlocked, the door ajar. The sun shines cheerfully overhead, but the sign says _closed._

"Hatter?" she calls through heaving breaths, pushing open the door. "Gold?"

No one answers. Inside, the shop _reeks _of magic. Bad spells. Tricks gone warped and crooked. The air smells like gnomes and knives and a split stomach. The air smells like the queen's dungeon. Like a dying phoenix. Like dragons' blood and tea.

Belle shoves her way through a sea of fallen clutter and into the back room. There, she finds an overturned tea tray on the floor, smashed and puddling. She picks up the kettle and opens the lid.

It smells… odd. Dirty, somehow. Old and deep.

Mushrooms.

Abruptly, Belle thinks of the lavender hat, the broken mirror the week before.

Hatter didn't put his fist through it, she realizes. _He put his body through it._ He broke it to keep something from _following him in. _Covering his tracks.

He always was best at covering his tracks.

She should have guessed. She should have smelled Wonderland on him, should have known, but she'd been so sure he couldn't glass-jump here, in this new world. She'd thought they were _stranded. _She'd thought they were _stuck_—after all, if he could glass-jump, why were they still here?

_Why _weren't they_ home?_

But that's not the point, not the point. Belle stands, threads her hands in her hair and pulls. The pain grounds her, steels her thoughts to the task at hand. She turns, taking in details, smelling the air.

Signs of a struggle, but not much. The spell-scents are strange and muddled and mixed with mushroom. What did Hatter use? A percussion spell, maybe? Percussion knocks people back—_out_, knocks people _out_ if it's used right—and yes, _there!_ Belle spots Gold's cane lying sideways, half hidden under the table. A smear of blood on the table's edge.

Drugged, unconscious, without his cane. Without the wand hidden _in_ the cane.

Gold is _lost._

_No._

Belle snatches up the cane and barrels through the side door, also unlocked. She finds Gold's Cadillac still there, parked discretely in the alleyway, and she doesn't know how to drive, but her father has been teaching them on the van—_fuck, Hatter has the van—_and it can't be that hard.

It _can't be._

So she picks the lock with a sideways spell and slips into the leather seat. She doesn't have the keys, but cars are just electricity, aren't they, and electricity is just a kind of magic. She can do this. She can.

Make it start. Right pedal means go. Simple. Simple. She'll be okay. They'll all be okay.

Belle concentrates, fires a spell into the wheel. The dash lights up, and for a moment her heart flies into her throat, hoping, hoping—

But the lights flicker out. Dead.

_Not dead, please, no._

Belle needs more skill than she has, more training than she was ever taught. Needs more, because if Hatter was here, she could do it, but Hatter _isn't _here—Hatter is going to _kill_ Rumpelstiltskin—and Belle tears at the cane.

If there's a mechanism to open the top, she can't find it—but she can _feel_ the wand seething inside.

Belle kicks open the car door and slams the cane into the brick wall of the building. Again and again, she smashes it home. Wood splinters. Her hands heat. Flame coils up her arms unattended. Still, Belle brings the cane down.

And she brings the cane down.

And she brings the cane down.

The metal warps, molding to her fingers, dripping down her wrists. But finally, the last wooden thread splinters and shatters, and with a clang, the wand falls free. When Belle snatches it up from the rain wet cement, her fingers dry a puddle there with a bone-jarring _hiss._

Belle climbs back in the car.

"You will start this fucking machine," she growls to the wand in her hand, "You will start it, or gods help me, I will destroy you, too. I will _uncreate you_."

The wand trembles between her metal soaked fingers. But the car starts. Thank god, the car starts.

Right pedal means go.

Belle drives.


	9. The Long Argument

Craw101 prompted: playing cards

The-red-priestess prompted: about unicorns and lullabies

This is the LAST CHAPTER in **Glass Houses.** May it bring you joy. After Sunday, I'm sort of tenuously planning for a continuation fixed on Hatter called **Pots and Kettles**. But we'll have to see how that turns out.

* * *

><p><strong>The Long Argument <strong>

* * *

><p>Belle points the Cadillac towards the cabin and flies. It's the only place they'd be. The two of them are just the same, riddled in all their fucking poetry. Gold and his flowers. Hatter taking the van, bringing him to the place Gold brought her father. It's the only way he'd do it—symmetry—Hatter and his fucking <em>mirrors.<em>

The drive takes too long.

The drive takes ten minutes.

And Belle doesn't bother to hide her approach. Knuckles like ice, melted metal in her palm cutting rivets in the leather-cased wheel, she takes the corners as fast as the car will go, pulls up the drive in a shower of gravel and screeching tires.

But even as she steps out and strides for the cabin, she hears Hatter inside. He's shouting, his shadow rough and wild, silhouetted on the window, "_Her name is Alice_. _And_ _you will_ _stay the hell away from my little girl!"_

Belle's palm clinks and clatters against the door handle, but the bloody stupid thing will not turn. Locked. Fucking _locked_. Wishing hard, Belle clenches the fairy wand in a white knuckled fist. She tries the door again.

Locked. Still locked. And she is going to _fucking_ _kill him._

She will kill them _both._

_Breathe, _she thinks._ Like Archie says. _

So Belle enchants herself instead.

"_Huff puff_," she snarls, and kicks in the goddamned door.

Hatter stops midsentence—something about all the queen's horses and all her dead men—and his eyes fly to hers. Gold is already looking her way, though his eyes are hazy, fluttering, threatening to roll back in his head. A playing card sticks to his forehead—the suicide king—and it's slowly killing him.

Belle does not stop to think. She doesn't even consider. Crossing the room in an instant, she rips the card from his skin. And it _hurts, _sends a broken shard of bitter magic all the way up her arm. Tendrils try to clench and clutch around her heart, but Belle burns—she _burns_—and its roots find no home in her.

She crumples the card in her metal stained fist and sends it to the floor. Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt.

Hatter stands very still. Cold as masonry, he looks so courtly, though his jacket falls loose at his sides, unbuttoned. His scarf is gone, lost on the floor, and fat red rope of a guillotine's passing catches the light when he turns his head to grin at her.

A golden crown perches on the brim of his lavender top hat.

"Whatever are you doing here, mutton?" he says.

And he is not himself. This, she knows abruptly, is not the man she loves.

"This is too much, Hatter. You're going too far."

"I rather think I'm being gentle, personally. Do you think maybe you could wait outside?"

"You need to s_top."_

Eyes very dark and too, too warm, Hatter smiles and she sees all the lullabies—all the whispered midnight stories of phoenixes and unicorns—festering in his earth.

"Belle," he says and he sounds so reasonable, so fucking _reasonable _and not broken at all. Not broken, though she can see the cracks, the _wrong, _and Belle clenches her fists so hard they hurt.

Hatter doesn't seem to notice. Hatter only _smirks_. "Mutton, he's working for the queen. He's a rabid dog. He's the start of another gods damned war and I think—and here's a novel concept; you might like it—that for _once _in our _frumious _lives, Belle, it's time to bring the war to _her_."

He is broken. He is hideous, monstrous and wrong.

He is _changed. _

Hatter goes nowhere without his scarves. Even in the night, he wears his shirts with high collars, every button locked. If ever her fingers brush his neck, he flinches, pulls away. Hatter does not wear his wounds. Hatter _never _wears his wounds.

"What happened?" she asks. "What's wrong with you?"

But he only smiles. Open and lovely, he smiles the way he smiles when he offers her a present—all pride and darting eyes and fidgeting magician's hands. "My sweet, you'll just have to trust me. This is for the best, I promise."

Belle swallows. It would be so easy to step back, to let him take care of things, to twin each other the way they always have. But the world feels as though it's falling from beneath her feet.

This is not Hatter.

Or, at least, this Hatter does not belong to her.

"I told you," she says, voice very nearly steady. "He is not working for the queen."

He snorts and scoffs. "Why," he grins, sharp at the edges, suddenly slightly less than civil. "Because he said so?"

"Because _I _said so_." _She plants herself between Hatter and Gold. The metal burned into her palm begins to flow again, collecting like honey beneath her nails. "And you trust me. You know I'm right. So you need to put the gun down, and come home."

And she expects Hatter will listen, because her Hatter always listens. Hatter will do anything she asks. But today, he stands beside a roughhewn kitchen table, his top hat low over his eyes. And he says, "No."

He does not look at all like the man she remembers—a lavender suit and a skittish smile in the face of a raging mob. He looks wild and broken. He looks cruel.

"Hatter, I won't let you kill him," she says. "You don't want this war."

Outside, the muzzy sky breaks long enough to send a shard of sunlight through the dirty windows and dancing dust motes. A gun drops down from Hatter's sleeve and catches in his fingers, glinting in the light.

Her father's gun. He didn't press charges, no, but once upon a time, Moe French hunted monsters, and the skills of his youth never quite went stale.

Hatter follows her eyes and smiles. He never seems to stop smiling, and his gray eyes are so painfully strange, impossibly dark, and he holds his shoulders taut, his hands loose and ready at his sides. The gun points downward, at the floor.

Gently, so gently, he says, "I won't lose you, too, mutton."

Belle meets his eyes, though she wants nothing better than to look away. "You fire that gun, you sure as hell will."

His patience breaks, but his smile clenches wider. "_Move_, Belle."

She holds her ground. She holds her spells, her history, and her brand-new fairy wand.

Belle bears her teeth and says, "Fuck you."

Behind her, Gold laughs, a weak and breathy chuckle. "Fantastic powers of negotiation, my dear."

"Shut up." Belle does not glance at him over her shoulder, though she wants to. She can hear him stirring, tugging on his ropes.

Not long and he stills again, apparently exhausted. When he speaks, his voice is barely there, "By all means. Wouldn't want to interrupt you antagonizing a madman."

Hatter grins, grins, keeps grinning. And though his eyes should be summer gray, his pupils are huge, filled with an ancient, _waiting_ black. He lifts the gun, aims it in the space between Belle's arm and hip. "I _believe_ the lady told you to _shut up_."

Belle steps to her right, closes the gap. The gun points at her stomach. Hatter's narrows his eyes, but the gun does not drop.

It is an effort to keep her voice steady, but Archie taught her this. Once upon a time, Hatter taught her this.

Imagine them naked. Imagine them unarmed.

"You keep pointing that gun at me, Hatter, so help me I will break every single oneof your goddamned fingers."

She finds Hatter is somehow worse than naked without his scarf.

And though Belle is terrified, still, she stands. She has held the wall against ogres with little more than a borrowed bow. She has fought spiders large enough to ride. She has sewn a gaping stomach shut. She has healed grievous, impossible wounds.

She can do this, too.

And for a long moment, no one speaks. Hatter only watches her, gauging her with that hawker's stare. And despite the history on his neck, his eyes are bitter, cold and clear.

"You love this Jabberwock, Belle?" he asks at last. "You love him?"

Belle holds her ground. "Hatter, put the gun down."

And something in him breaks. His façade dissolves. Rage twists up his face. _"_I said_, do you love this fucking monster, _Belle_?"_

Belle brings up the wand, for all the good the nasty little thing can do. With her other hand, she clenches magic, brings to bear a shield. "Goddamnit, Hatter," she says._ "Put the damn gun down!"_

And he goes still. His face empties.

"You'd cast at me," he says, and it sounds like a realization, like wonder, like betrayal and goddamnit—how dare _he_ feel betrayed. "You'd kill me. For him. Huh. Where'd you get that, anyway?"

"Belle," Gold manages. His breathing sounds as though it hurts. "You don't know what that's capable of. Perhaps put it down? There's a love."

Hatter grins. "Or point it at _him_," he says, jerks the gun in Gold's direction. He bites his tongue between his front teeth and laughs. "Shove it down his _throat, _mutton. Off with his _fucking_ head."

Belle does not flinch. She does not move. She stares Hatter in his awful, wrong and newly ancient eyes.

"You can mirror-jump," she throws her gauntlet down. "The other night, I thought you had one of your turns. But you didn't. You didn't have a turn at all, did you, Hatter?

Abruptly, he stops smiling. "Ah. You noticed that?"

"You went to Wonderland."

"Belle," he tries to laugh, but it comes out something closer to a wheeze. He tries a winning smile instead. "It's not what you think."

"You've _been _going to Wonderland. Haven't you? You had to smash the mirror because something was chasing you. Something _followed you back_."

He takes a step forward. The gun disappears back into his sleeve and he holds out his hand to her, head cocked, fixing her his very best puppy-dog eyes. "Dearest I'll explain later, I promise—"

But they are absolutely the _wrong_ eyes. Belle slaps his hand away with a broken spell.

"_Now_," she barks.

And Hatter's smile folds into a pained frown. He glances, once, over her shoulder, lifts two twisted fingers to the shell of his ear in the signal that means: _we have company listening. _

"I love you," Belle says and her voice does not waver. "I want to trust you. But you could mirror-jump—you could have taken us _home—_and you didn't tell me. I deserve to know why."

He smiles, tight. "Not in front of the Jabberwock, dear."

"Damnit, Hatter. You _brought _the fucking Jabberwock here!"

Belle's fires rise and boil towards him, but bend back long before they can touch. She cannot hurt him. Even now, she cannot hurt him.

"I stood with you," she shouts, until her flames touch the ceiling, licking holes in the roof for the sun to shine through. "When the worst happened, I was there. I saved you. _I got you out!"_

"You did. My Mary Ann, you absolutely did," he creeps forward, both hands spread, offering an embrace. "That's why you have to _trust_ me now. You have to trust I'm saving _you_."

Belle slams her fist into his chest—the one with the wand—and Hatter staggers back. She barely notices. She cannot breathe. The heat is killing her. Her heart throbs in her chest. She cannot breathe. _She cannot breathe_. The whole world is splitting at the seams.

"If you're saving me," she chokes as her peach pit grows branches and leaves, "w_hy didn't you tell me?"_

Hatter grabs her by her shoulders. He finds her eyes, he takes them and holds. He says, "I _couldn't_."

And abruptly, Belle goes cold.

Gold snorts, half-laughs, though it sounds as though it hurts. "He's working for the Queen of Hearts."

Hatter snarls, _"No! _You shut the hell up!"

Blindly, Belle pushes away his arms. The soft cotton of Hatter's shirt slides under her fingers, but she can barely see it. She can only see dirt, dirt, _dirt _in every direction, can only smell blood and sod and desperation.

Once upon a time, Hatter went to his grave.

Once upon a time, Belle dug him out.

"He's right. That's where these cards came from," she whispers, seeing for the first time the army of hearts and clubs scattered across the floor, pain riddled rune-marks decorating their crimson and ermine robes. "This isn't the old deck. It _can't be. _We lost those in the Western Pass."

He tries to grab her arm again, but Hatter cannot reach her. She is another world away. "Your Jabberwock has a load of things in his shop—" he starts and Gold coughs, bitter and rough.

"If I had a deck like that, boy, you'd never have found it."

"Hatter, _why_?" Belle demands.

Spitting curses, Hatter tosses up his hands. He spins, heaves a wooden chair into the fire place and snarls when it explodes in a shower of green butterflies and leaves. "I had to do something!"

And Belle breaks. She breaks. Because, well, why not? What is there left to stand for? Hatter needed her support, needed _her_, but he is gone.

"About _what?" _she asks. She smooths the creases in her skirt, and her voice is cold and still._ "_This isn't about Alice, Hatter. You can't pretend that little girl set you to this. Don'tyou put your damned foolish war on her."

For a moment, his bowed shoulders lift. He turns, eyes bright, something like hope. And Belle can't help but think how normal this all seems. Outside, the rain clouds have broken. She smells wet grass and sodden wood, hears the birds singing the first few notes of spring. Sunshine pours through the crooked little windows, draping like wings—like hurtful, bloody memories—over everything.

This is war, Belle thinks. This is the end of her family. It shouldn't be like this.

She should be wearing armor. Or, at least, it should have the decency to rain.

But Hatter smiles. Really smiles. And he looks so goddamned beautiful. He looks fifty years younger. He looks like a boy she knew, once upon a time, all hope and mischief and quick, dirty fingers.

"It's about _us_, Belle," he says and grinning, twines his fingers through with hers. "All of us. We can be a family."

"We _are _family, Hatter. What are you talking about?"

"You, me, Alice—"

Belle pulls away. She takes a step back. Then another.

"Her name is Gracie, Hatter. _Gracie. _She's been Gracie since you lost her."

"So? She's still my daughter."

This is not right. This is _not right. _Rumpelstiltskin let himself be tied to a _kitchen chair. _He is weak and wavering, and Belle is the only thing standing between the strongest creature in all the kingdoms and her mad, hatted friend.

She is a tin solider. She is an old and useless clown. And when the tremors start, she cannot seem to make them stop. The ground shivers beneath her feet. In the chest behind Gold's back, some kind of porcelain set rattles and cracks.

"You have no _right_ to her!" Belle snarls. The light bulb bursts above her head. Silverware explodes, sending shards of metal in all directions.

Nothing hits him. Nothing _can _hit him. But Hatter turns his head as though he has been struck. Slowly, painfully, he murmurs, "No."

He holds his head low, legs stiff, like a dog about to bite. Insists, like deep dungeons, "She is my daughter."

"You don't know what kind of hellfire you're playing with, boy," Gold says from his chair.

Hatter stops and smiles, smiles so wide it hurts.

"What part of _shut your fucking mouth_ did you have trouble with?"

Cards whip from his pockets, too fast to follow—clubs, all of them clubs. Belle tries to catch the cards, tries to burn them up before they reach him, but they avoid her groping fingers, dance off the dripping metal of her palms. The cards find their target and Gold's head snaps around as each blow falls.

And Hatter grins. "Warning shot. Next one's an ace. I think I'll put it through your fucking knee."

"No," Belle says and she shakes down to the foundation. The stones that anchor the wood in the earth begin to tremble. Bits of ceiling come flaking down.

And she holds her ground. She holds her ground, her body locked between her friend—her brother, her chosen twin—and the man she used to love.

This is not a man she knows. This is a stranger wearing Hatter's face.

"Hatter, stop. Put the gun down. Walk away."

He grins at her, all teeth. "Make me."

"Hatter—"

_"Well? _Come on, if you love him so damn much. What's the problem mutton? _Hit me. _Or—wait," he stops and grins, flicks a finger to his chin. "Is it not true love?"

"_Stop!" _she shouts. Cracks shatter outward from the stone beneath her feet.

But Hatter lunges. He grabs her by her blouse, pulls her close until they are nose to nose and even now—even bloody now—his breath smells sweet, like the candies from his pockets.

"Make me, Belle. Make me!_ Put me down!"_

"The Queen of Hearts—"

He throws his head back and laughs, dances away in an old saunter she half remembers. When he sobers, his teeth are bared. In the light between the rain and the trees, his mouth is far, far too red.

"The Queen of Hearts," he says, "is _dead."_

Nothing but cold, the words filter through Belle's head in a storm of jagged angles and awful realizations.

The broken mirror. Hatter's crown.

"Oh gods, Hatter. What have you done?"

He bows—a court bow, very old, from long lost kingdoms back home—and when he rises, he is smiling, his awful, too-dark eyes fixed to hers.

"The Queen of Hearts is _dead. _Long live _my_ queen."

Grinning, Hatter holds out to her a hand. Belle has only ever seen half-missing cats with smiles quite that wide.

"It was meant to be your birthday present," he says and sighs. "But, ah! Such is life. Long live Belle. Long live Rose. Long live my Mary Ann. Tell me, my dear, who are you on your crowning day?"

Never in her life has she wanted to touch anyone as badly as she wants to hold Hatter now. She thinks, if only her father's heavy watch is sturdy enough, if only she is heavy enough, maybe she can weigh him down, ground him, keep him whole before he dies, another lost phoenix, and sets the world aflame.

But Belle doesn't move. She feels as though roots span from her toes and sink into the soil beneath the cabin floor. In a hundred years, she will still be here, her crevices filled with horror and moss.

She stares at Hatter's offered hand. Her eyes cannot seem to move. Flaking brown still stains his coat cuffs and his black leather gloves.

"Dead," the word rings hollow. Somehow, she manages. She asks. "When?"

Hatter shrugs. His mouth twists and he jerks a thumb in Gold's direction. "While you were off fucking _him_. Not that I'm bitter, it's just…" he sighs. "Would you at least let me _approve_ of them first? I much prefer the cricket to _this_ conniving bastard."

"Gods save us," she breathes.

"Fuck 'em. _I'll_ save us. Just take a few steps to your left, precious lamb, and it'll all be over."

"How? How could you possibly…"

"I jumped through the looking glass and _took off her_ _head_!" Hatter crows and grins so wide Belle can only see his face splitting, ripping from side to side and slowly, somewhere in the future, the rest of him disappears. "Gardening shears. Bit rusty, but then, so am I. Twenty eight years box will do that. Tell you the truth, I thought it'd be harder. But then, regicide does have a tendency towards the anticlimactic."

Once upon a time, she couldn't sleep for the sound of dogs at night. Could stop waiting for the mobs to come, the inn to burn, the curse to fall, the spells to hurt. Couldn't close her eyes, couldn't dare risk it, because what if she woke and Hatter wasn't there? Worse yet, what if she woke—what if she woke, but Hatter didn't?

And now.

Now.

Hatter dragged that nightmare back again. On purpose. Because he _missed it. _

"They'll be hunting us," she whispers. Trembling coils of smoke drift from her lips. It tastes of phoenix ash. Of loss. A vast and terrible, unspeakable loss.

But Hatter smells nothing. He sees nothing. He sees only the world he's building for himself, and he's putting her in it—he's stealing her away—and he's smiling the while, saying, "Not if they can't get through. The queen is dead, long live _you. _I own the mirrors. Wonderland is _ours."_

Belle shakes her head. It is the only part of her that moves.

"You can't hold that much magic. It'll kill you, Hatter. It'll drive you mad. Can't you see it? It'll _devour you. _You have to let it go!"

And Hatter.

Hatter rolls his eyes at her.

"No. I _have to _tie up some uffish loose ends. I _have to _fetch my daughter back. I _have to _rebuild… oh, about a third of the Card Castle—and oh, of course, there's the army of living briars that will want cutting—but then—then, I'll have only tobring my family home."

"No."

"Come on, Belle," he snarls and the gun is in his hand again. "Two left and straight on 'till morning!"

"_No_."

"I'm cleaning the cups, mutton. It's time to move the hell _down_."

She shakes her head. For all the good it does, she shakes her head, while around her, the cabin crumbles. Her spells escape her. Bits by bit, they nibble the wood until it flakes away entirely, outward into the grass, like the curling peel of a rotting fruit. If Belle cared to look, she could see the blue sky sprawled above her.

And oh, it is a _beautiful_ day.

And this… this thing requires a different kind of strength. Because she can rot this cabin into dust, she can set the forest aflame. But Hatter will still stand, with all the cards of a kingdom in his pocket, and magic swirling around his head and hands. Even if she can, even if she can make him stop, how can she destroy what she loves best?

"There are crumbs in your works," she whispers. Then, at last, desperate, "_Andy Lee_—"

Hatter snarls, brings his fist down hard on the still-standing mantle piece. The stone shatters like an eggshell and crumbles into the hearth.

"That is not my _name_."

"It _is_. You know it is. Before the hats, before the first mirror. We were friends. We were _always _friends. Hatter, you were my only friend. When my mother died, do you remember?"

"That wasn't me."

"Do you remember?" Deliberately, Belle presses forward. Now, she is the one with an outstretched hand. "The castle was such a mess, with all manner of people and doctors, and everyone was looking for me to say how _sorry _they were and I just wanted to be left alone, and Hatter, you found me."

Hatter flinches. He backs away. "Some Andy Lee bloke found you, you mean."

Belle takes another step. She barely breathes. She counts her paces to keep calm—remembers once, so long ago, doing the same.

Once upon a time, she saved Hatter that day.

"You took me somewhere where they couldn't find me, even though they searched for hours," she whispers and her hand does not waver. "A few times, the guards walked right past us. We could see their feet, but they didn't think to look under the ledge. Hatter, do you remember?"

But Hatter will not touch her. He backs away, as if she is poison and death and dogs in the night and all those things from which they've ever run.

"It wasn't me," he insists. His eyes are wide and nearly summer gray. "I'm Hatter. I'm _Hatter."_

And Belle does not cry. She says, "We painted the roses red that day. For my mother. We painted the roses red."

Hatter breaks. He sobs, though no tears fall from the storm clouds in his eyes. He turns his face away. "_That wasn't me_!"

Three steps. Four. Five.

"And you said you'd never be Andy Lee again. You said you were going away. You'd been apprenticed, but you didn't tell me until then. You waited—" The words catch and crumble. Belle sobs.

But she walks.

Six steps. Seven.

Hatter's face crumples. Finally, he meets her eyes. "Until the very last second. I wanted every second."

Eight steps. Nine.

Belle whispers, "You left me the day my mother died."

"I came back." He swallows, tries to smile. With his hand, he forms their sign—_I love you._ Then, _lambs. _"I heard you taming monsters. My Mary Ann."

For a moment, he's Hatter—_he's Hatter_—and Belle chokes on tears, half laughing.

"You liar. You were picking pockets in farming towns."

"I was doing that, too."

And then, Gold ruins everything.

"As charming as this is…" he starts and Belle purses her lips at him.

"No, _you_ shut up," she says. "You're supposed to be clever. First rule of the road—always feed strangers; never accept their food. What were you thinking?"

Gold does not look like a man who has been close to death. He smiles and Belle sees his gold tooth is back. "I was _thinking_ he wasn't a stranger."

"You got cocky."

Gold shrugs. The ropes that bind his hands fall loose and coil on the floor.

"Perhaps true," he says and stands. He seems utterly himself again. "Or perhaps, I only needed certain information… confirmed."

And though he must keep one hand on the back of his chair to steady himself without his cane, Gold is strong. He is not ill or marked by cards. He arches an eyebrow at her and holds out a hand.

"My wand, if you would, my dear."

Without quite meaning to, Belle pulls away.

Ten.

In an instant, Hatter is at her side. His fingers lock in hers. He does not say, "I told you so." Instead, he glares at Gold, he snarls, "I can kill you. I can squeeze until your head comes off."

Gold rolls his eyes. "The latter, certainly, but not the former. There's only one way of killing me, boy, and a little strategic pressure isn't it."

Belle looks between the two of them, both bristling with their armory and battalion of stolen spells over the wreckage of a cottage no one really owns. The air crackles and reeks of magic, of dark places and so many thing better left forgot.

And suddenly, Belle realizes, "You cheated. Both of you."

Gold frowns. He can see everything. Or, at least, Rumpelstiltskin always could. Anything but her. Whatever happened, he never expected her. "Pardon?" he says.

Belle staggers back.

Eleven.

"I don't know you. Either of you," she whispers. "What are you playing at? Why? Starting more wars, as if we haven't had enough already. I'd expect it from you—Gold, Rumpelstiltskin, whatever the hell you call yourself. But Hatter… Hatter_, why?"_

Hatter folds his mouth in a solemn, darkened line. The gun drops from his sleeve again, into his hand for the last time. "It has to be done. Mint and mutton," he says so gently. "Not much further now."

The walls of the cabin have long since rotted into dust and mud. Belle backs up right over the remnants of the door.

Twelve.

She thinks, suddenly, she understands what it was Archie tried to tell her.

"I want no part of this," she demands, her shoulders squared. "I'm not fighting anymore. I am _done_. I lay down my sword."

"Belle, don't go," Gold starts. He would cross the empty floor to her, she sees, but his knee will not bear his weight.

Hatter, on the other hand, lurches forward, "Mary Ann," he pleads. He tries to smile and it warps his face. "Mutton. All my lambs and ivy, _please_."

But Belle understands.

This is why Archie's eyes drop when she speaks Hatter's name. This is why _post traumatic _scratches paths and crossroads on her charts. This is why Archie called and called and left so many messages on the tiny, blinking machine, until late one night when Hatter thought she couldn't hear, _he _picked up the phone, and Archie never dialed back again.

This is why she's broken. This is why she catches fire in the middle of the streets, in a new world where there is no magic, but still so many monsters to defeat.

Let Emma hunt them. Belle is an old dragon. She has flown once with phoenixes.

Today, she lays down her wings.

"No," she breathes. "No more. I'm done."

_Thirteen_.

Belle steps over the threshold and into the world. Slowly, she lifts her hand and twists her fingers at them both in a cantrip for honor and good luck.

She drops the wand. Let it rot.

She turns.

And lighter than she's felt in thirty years, Belle walks into the woods.

She does not reemerge.


End file.
